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ON ACTIVE SERVICE 
IN PEACE AND WAR 



BOOKS BY 

HENRY L. STIMSON 



AMERICAN POLICY IN NICARAGUA 

DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM 

THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 

ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN PEACE AND WAR 
with McGcorgc Bundy 




HENRY L. ST1MSON 

PORTRAIT BV KARSH 



ON 
ACTIVE SERVICE 

IN PEACE AND WAR 

BY 

HENRY L. STIMSON 

Secretary of War 191 1-13 ', Secretary of State 1929-33 
Secretary of War 1940-45 

AND 
McGEORGE BUNDY 

Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows 
Harvard University 




HARPER 6? BROTHERS, NEW YORK 



4-8 

ON ACTIVE SERVICE IN PEACE AND WAR 
Copyright^ /p^7, /jtytf, by Henry L. Stimson 

Printed in the United States of America 

All 'nghts in this book are reserved. 
No part o/ the book may be reproduced in any 
manner whatsoever without written permission 
except in the case of brie] quotations embodied 
in critical articles and reviews. For information 
address Harper 3" Brothers 

FIRST EDITION 
B-X 



About one fifth of the material in this book was 
published serially under the title of Time of Peril 



THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

TO 

M. W. S. 

WHOSE LOVE AND CARE HAVE 
MADE POSSIBLE BOTH THE 
LIFE AND THIS RECORD OF IT 

H, L. S. McG. B. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Introduction by Henry L. Stimson xi 

PART I: ON MANY FRONTS 

I Attorney for the Government 3 

II With Roosevelt and Taft 18 

i. Running for Governor 2. Secretary of War 3. The 
Split of 1912 

III Responsible Government 56 

i. Framing a Program 2. In Convention Assembled 
3. Success, Failure, and Victory 4. Credo of a Progres- 
sive Conservative 

IV The World Changes 82 

i. War Comes to America 2. Colonel Stimson 

V As Private Citizen 101 

i. The League of Nations Fight 2. At the Bar 3. The 
Peace of Tipitapa 

VI Governor General of the Philippines 117 

I. The Background 2. A Happy Year 3. Later Dis- 
appointments and Some Hopes 

PART II: WITH SPEARS OK STRAW 

VII Constructive Beginnings 155 

I. Washington in 1929 2. London in 1930 3, Latin 
America in 1931 

VIII The Beginnings of Disaster 190 

I, Before the Storm 2, Economic Crisis in Europe 
3. More about "These Damn Debts" 

IX The Far Eastern Crisis 2,20 

i. A Japanese Decision 2. From Conciliation to Non- 
recognition 3. Shanghai 4. The Borah Letter 5. Con- 
clusion and Retrospect 



vn 



X The Tragedy of Timidity 

i. Disarmament A Surface Issue 2. The Failure of 
Statesmanship 

XI Out Again 282 

i. The Campaign of 1932 2. Middleman after Election 

XII Toward General War 297 

i. Citizen and Observer 2. 1933-1940 Cast as Cas- 
sandra 

PART HI: TIME OF PERIL 

XIII Call to Arms 323 

i. Back to Washington 2. The Newcomer 3. The 
Best Staff He Ever Had 

XIV The First Year 345 

I. Men for the New Army 2. Supplies 3. To Britain 
Alone 

XV Valley of Doubt 364 

I. A Difference with the President 2, The Price of 
Indecision 

XVI The War Begins 382 

i . Pearl Harbor 2. Mission of Delay 3. War Secretary 

XVII The Army and Grand Strategy 41^ 

I . Pearl Harbor to North Africa 2. The Great I >eeision 

XVIII The Wartime Army 449 

i. Reorganization 2, "Dipping Down" 3. The Place 
of Specialists 4. Student Soldiers 5. The Army and the 
Negro 6. Science and New Weapons 

XIX The Effort for Total Mobilization 470 

i. Military Manpower 2. National Service 3. Labor 
and the War 4. The Army and War Production A Note 
on Administration 5. Public Relations 

XX The Army and the Navy 503 

i, Stimson and the Admirals 2. Lessons of Antisub- 
marine War 3. Unification and the Future 



XXI The Army and the Grand Alliance 524 

i. Stilwell and China 2. France Defeat, Darlan, De 
Gaulle, and Deliverance 3. FDR and Military Govern- 
ment 4. A Word from Hindsight 

XXII The Beginnings of Peace 565 

i. A Shift in Emphasis 2. The Morgenthau Plan 
3. The Crime of Aggressive War 4. Planning for Recon- 
struction 5. A Strong America 6. Bases and Big Powers 
7. The Emergent Russian Problem 

XXIII The Atomic Bomb and the Surrender of Japan 612 

i . Making a Bomb 2. The Achievement of Surrender 

XXIV The Bomb and Peace with Russia 634 

XXV The Last Month 656 

i . Judgment of the Army 2. The Chief of Staff 3. The 
Commander in Chief 4. The End 

Afterword by Henry L. Stimson 671 

A Note of Explanation and Acknowledgment 

by McGeorge Bundy 673 

Brief Chronology of World War 1 1 679 

Index 685 



INTRODUCTION 



book contains an account of the years of my public 
A service my actions, motives, and estimates of results 
from my point of view. The writing of the book has been the 
work of Mr. McGeorge Bundy. Its style and composition are 
his; but, where he writes of what I have thought and felt, he 
does so after we have worked together for eighteen months in 
an earnest effort to make an accurate and balanced account. We 
have aimed to present not only my past experience but my 
present opinions as clearly and as honestly as we can. The 
result is a record which I believe fully reflects my best judg- 
ment of what my public life has been. I am profoundly grate- 
ful to him for having made possible this record upon questions 
which are vital to me and on which I have spent most of my 
active life. 

This book is intended to be a "pilot biography" to be 
written while my memory of important events is still alive in 
order to forestall possible biographies written without the 
careful aid of my papers or myself. Unfortunately I have lived 
long enough to know that history is often not what actually 
happened but what is recorded as such. While it is as accurate 
as Mr. Bundy and I can make it, we know that even so it 
contains errors of fact and judgment, and accordingly my 
executors will be directed to place my diaries and other papers 
in a depository where, in due time, they will be perfectly 
accessible to historians and other students, in order that such 
errors may be corrected in the cold light of history. 

Inasmuch as I did not enter into public office until I was 
over thirty-eight years old and kept no diaries of my previous 
life, and as the reader may have some interest in the sources 
from which I came and the formative conditions which 
developed and influenced me during my early life, it has seemed 
well that I should add to this introduction a few pages bearing 
on those factors. It will be necessarily a little longer and I 



xii INTRODUCTION 

trust a little more illuminating than a transcription of Who's 
Who and will be wholly dependent upon my own memory. 
When a man reaches my age, there are for better or worse 
few who can either corroborate or contradict him. 

My forebears on both sides of my family were nearly all of 
New England stock, products of the Massachusetts migration 
during the first half of the seventeenth century. They were 
sturdy, middle-class people, religious, thrifty, energetic, and 
long-lived. Almost the only non-English strain was composed 
of the French Huguenot Boudinots, represented in my great- 
grandmother, whose stories to me of her childhood talks with 
George Washington, coupled with the fact that I possessed 
for some years not only all my grandparents but in addition 
no less than four great-grandparents, convinced me that man's 
normal term of life on this earth was at least a hundred years. 
Soon after the Revolution both sides of the family moved from 
Massachusetts and took up land in New York, my Stimson 
ancestor, who had been a soldier in the Continental Army 
throughout the war, becoming the first settler of Windham 
in the Catskills, and the ancestors of my mother settling on the 
Delaware River near Delhi. Both lines contained enough 
clergymen and deacons to keep up fairly well the moral stand- 
ards of the stock. From these agrarian surroundings of up- 
State New York my father's father and my mother's mother, 
years later, attracted by the great city which was developing 
at the mouth of the Hudson, moved down to New York to 
try to find a more interesting and varied life. 

I was born in New York City on September 21, 1867. Less 
than nine years thereafter my young mother died leaving her 
two children motherless, but the doors of my grandparents' 
home immediately opened and took us in to the loving care of 
the large family within. 

From then until I was thirteen years old I lived the life of 
a New York City boy. During the morning I attended New 
York schools whose curricula were so unsatisfactory that for 
two years my hard-working father took me entirely out of 
school and himself gave me the only teaching of that period 
which stood by me in later years. During the afternoon I had 
no outdoor place wherein to play except the cobbled streets of 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

the city. There were then in New York no recreation grounds 
in or out of the schools, and the grassy meadows of Central 
Park were strictly foreclosed against trespass. Nor were there 
any rapid transit systems by which to reach the outside country. 

But at thirteen there came a great change. My mental and 
physical horizons broadened before me. My father, dissatisfied 
with the conditions in New York, placed me in Phillips 
Academy at Andover, Massachusetts. I was much younger than 
any other boy in the school but the new surroundings were like 
heaven to a boy who craved escape from city life. I have heard 
the discipline of Phillips Academy of those old days described 
by an alumnus as "perfect freedom, tempered by expulsion." 
Of the outdoor life of the students that was a fair description. 
There was football, baseball, skating, bobsledding, and walk- 
ing over the hills and woodlands of northern Massachusetts 
within generous limits, quite untrammeled by authority. 

But once we entered the classroom it was quite a different 
matter. Andover fitted a boy for college and it fitted him 
well. The courses taught were fewer than they are today, but 
they were taught with extreme thoroughness. And the numbers 
of each class being large, the mere experience of standing 
up before a good-sized audience and answering tough prob- 
lems before a rapid-firing instructor was in itself a stiff disci- 
pline to the average boy. To me it opened a new world of 
effort and competition. It also opened to me a new world of 
democracy and of companionship with boys from all portions 
of the United States. At that time Phillips Academy contained 
about two hundred fifty students, many coming from rural New 
England, but the remainder from nearly every other state in 
the Union. A large percentage of them were working their 
own way in whole or in part 

School life was extremely simple and inexpensive. The cost 
of tuition was sixty dollars a year. The school possessed no 
dormitories except the Latin and English Commons, in which 
nearly a third of the students lived. These consisted of two 
rows of very cheaply built three-story wooden houses, each 
house containing rooms for six students. The rental for each 
student was three dollars a term. There was no sanitation or 
waier except from a single outdoor pump from which each 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

student carried his own requirements, and no heat except 
that which came from each student's stove. And as the two 
rows of Commons stood on the northwestern slope of Andover 
Hill facing the distant New Hampshire hills on the horizon, 
winter life there was neither soft nor enervating. Some of the 
remaining students roomed in the houses of instructors but 
most of them were in boardinghouses approved by the faculty 
in the town of Andover. 

The result for me was association with a very different group 
of young men from those I had met in New York; they were 
representatives of homes of many varieties scattered all over 
the United States most of them simple homes but in gen- 
eral the boys were drawn to Andover by the desire to get the 
teaching given by a school which was known to have repre- 
sented for over a hundred years the ideals of character and 
education believed in by the founders of our country. 

I was too young to appreciate the full advantages of these 
new associations at first, but as the years of my course rolled by 
they were brought home to rne, and I can never be sufficiently 
grateful to the school for the revolution it worked in my own 
character. In 1905 I was elected a trustee of the school and 
subsequently the president of the Board of Trustees, a position 
I held until my resignation in 1947. During these forty-two 
years the development of the school its ideals as well as its 
buildings and surroundings has been one of the greatest 
interests of my life. 

I was graduated from Andover in 1883 in the Classical 
Department a year too young to be admitted to Yale and 
spent the intervening year in special tutoring in New York, 
returning to Andover during the spring term of 1884 and tak- 
ing up special scientific courses. 

In the autumn of 1884 1 entered the class of '88 at Yale, 
That college had not yet fully embarked upon its career as a 
university. The elective system had only begun. The courses 
of freshmen and sophomores were still prescribed and con- 
sisted largely of Latin, Greek, and mathematics taught rather 
less effectively than at Andover. Even in junior and senior 
years, with the exception of "Billy" Sumner's economics and 
some of the courses in English and history, there was much 



INTRODUCTION xv 

time lost. There was little opportunity for individual thinking 
as distinguished from reciting things taught. The chief fruits 
of my four years at Yale came from the potent democratic 
class spirit then existing on the Yale campus; and that experi- 
ence was most important to my life, both in the character 
developed and in the friendships formed. 

When, after my graduation in 1888, I went for two years 
to the Harvard Law School, I found an atmosphere both inside 
the halls of the university and outside in its yard which was 
remarkably different from that in New Haven. In the class- 
rooms of the Law School there was a spirit of independent 
thinking unlike anything I had met before. It was highly com- 
petitive and provocative of individual reasoning. To one who 
had been accustomed to enter a classroom for the purpose of 
reciting from memory lessons previously learned from higher 
authority, this was a sharp surprise. In the Law School class- 
rooms one was obliged to form his own opinions and rules of 
law by induction from legal decisions stated without comment 
and to do it on the floor. The whole atmosphere was electric 
with the sparks of competitive argument On the other hand, 
among the students of the university at large, there was little 
of the corporate class spirit and democratic energy which was 
so visible on the Yale campus. The Harvard student, even if 
he was an undergraduate, seemed to think less in terms of his 
class and college and more in those of the outside world than 
his opposite number at Yale. There was also broader and 
more individualistic thinking open to him. For example, in 
philosophy he might study under three great teachers George 
H. Palmer, William James, and Josiah Royce, and these were 
available whether he was an undergraduate or in a professional 
school. 

In the retrospect of years it is hard, if not impossible, to 
balance fairly the benefits to their students accruing sixty years 
ago from the corporate energy and democratic spirit of Yale 
as against the courageous individualism and broader philos- 
ophy of Harvard. I can only say that I am glad to have had 
a vision of both of these great institutions, and further, that the 
teachings of the Harvard Law School created a greater revolu- 
tion in my power of thinking than any teaching that I got from 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Yale, while the faith in mankind that I learned on the campus 
at New Haven was greater and stronger than any such faith I 
achieved at Harvard. 

In 1885, at the close of my freshman year at Yale, there 
came to me an unexpected and exceptional opportunity to 
become acquainted with another very democratic side of 
American life. My pioneer ancestors had given me a sound 
body and a love of the outdoors, together with a deep yearning 
for the loneliness of the wilderness. By a stroke of good fortune 
I received in 1885 a chance to visit a portion of the western 
United States while it was yet a frontier, with Indians still 
restive and wild animals still abundant. The effect on my future 
life was profound. For over twenty years thereafter I spent a 
portion of nearly every year in the mountains and forests 
of the western Rockies or Canada, exploring, hunting, and 
traveling by horse, foot, or canoe. I came into contact with the 
simple rough men of the wilderness, both red and white. I 
witnessed an Indian outbreak in 1887. 1 came to know the 
Blackfeet and hunted and climbed with their young men. I 
became a fair rifleman and canoeman; was at home in forest, 
prairie or mountains; could pack my own horses, kill my own 
game, make my own camp, and cook my own meals. There 
were no guides in those days in the places I visited. With 
George Bird Grinnell I explored and mapped that portion 
of Montana now comprising Glacier National Park, and one 
of the mountains there still bears my name* When I married f 
obtained a devoted helpmeet who also loved the wilderness 
and was willing to endure its discomforts and hardships, so 
our trips were continued until well into middle life. 

Looking back, 1 find it hard to exaggerate the effect of 
these experiences on my later life. That effect, physical, mental, 
and moral, was great. Not only is self-confidence gained by 
such a life, but ethical principles tend to become simpler by 
the impact of the wilderness and by contact with the men 
who live in it. Moral problems arc divested of the confusion 
and complications which civilization throws around them* 
Selfishness cannot be easily concealed, and the importance of 
courage, truthfulness, and frankness is increased. To a certain 
extent the effect is similar to the code of honor learned by the 
soldier in the field. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

After the termination of my work at the Harvard Law 
School in 1890, I lived for three years with my father in New 
York City. He was the man who of all others had the greatest 
influence upon the ideals and purposes of my adolescent life. 
He had been a soldier in the Civil War and had well-nigh 
paid for that experience with his life. At the close of the war 
he became a banker and broker in the firm of his father in 
New York. He married in 1866 and some five years afterward, 
when my mother's failing health drove the family to Europe, 
he gave up his business in Wall Street, to which he had never 
given his heart, and began the study of medicine in Zurich and 
Paris under Pasteur, completing his course and taking his 
medical degree on his return at the Bellevue Hospital Medical 
College. My mother's death was a crushing blow to him and 
he never remarried but devoted himself with such effort to his 
profession that he advanced with unusual speed to eminence 
in the branch of his choice surgery. He became professor 
of surgery in the New York University Medical School, and 
subsequently in the Cornell Medical College from its establish- 
ment until the date of his death. He became attending surgeon 
at the Presbyterian and Bellevue hospitals and finally at the 
New York Hospital where he remained for twenty-two years 
until his retirement, carrying in addition to his service at the 
hospital full responsibility for the heavy service at their 
emergency branch, the House of Relief in Hudson Street. He 
was never particularly interested in the development of a 
lucrative private practice. His heart was in his hospital work. 
I remember his quoting to me some famous French surgeon 
who had said that he much preferred the poor for his patients 
for God was their paymaster. While T was with him he lived 
frugally, mainly on his salary as a professor and the income 
from the slender savings of his early years as a young banker. 
In spite of the bent for mathematics and science which under- 
lay his success in his profession, throughout his life he main- 
tained his love of the classics and of classical and European 
history, remembering his Latin poetry long after my own 
memory of it was sadly dimmed. The influence of such a 
character upon his children was their greatest loadstone and 
guide. My sister never married and lived with him in a won- 
derful companionship until his death. My own three years in 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

his house, in close and affectionate contact with him while 
working my way in the practice of the law downtown, was a 
period of dominant importance in the shaping of my future 
life. 

On July 6, 1893, I married Miss Mabel Wellington White, 
the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. White of New 
Haven, Connecticut. That marriage has now lasted for over 
fifty-four years, during which she has ever been my devoted 
companion and the greatest happiness in my life. 

I was admitted to the bar in New York County in June 
1891. Five months afterward I became a clerk in the office 
of Root & Clarke, and on January i, 1893, I was admitted to 
the firm. Mr. Bronson Winthrop, who became my lifelong 
partner, was admitted to the firm on the same day. On Mr. 
Clarke's retirement in 1897 the firm's name became Root, 
Howard, Winthrop & Stimson, and after Mr. Root became 
Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President McKinley the 
firm name became Winthrop & Stimson. It so continued until 
1927 when it was changed to Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & 
Roberts, the name it holds today, when the partners number 
thirteen and the law clerks in its office thirty-six more. The 
firm received its character from its original founder, Elihu 
Root, who was our exemplar of what a high-minded counselor 
should be, and the memory of whose rectitude, wisdom, anil 
constructive sagacity ever remained before us. Winthrop ami 
I did our utmost to carry on the traditions of the firm which 
Mr. Root left. The character of the young men who there- 
after came into the firm has been a source of high satisfac- 
tion in my life. Even now, when I am no longer an active 
member of the firm, I find my association with its members 
one of my greatest comforts. During my various excursions 
into public life I always felt that I remained a lawyer with a 
law firm waiting as a home behind me, to which I could return 
on the completion of my public task and where I would always 
find awaiting me congenial friends and collaborators in the 
law. This feeling gave me a confidence in the performance 
of my public duties which was an inestimable encouragement 

The early nineties were times of seething political activity 
in New York. I came of a Republican family but when Presi- 



INTRODUCTION xix 

dent Cleveland raised the issue of reducing the tariff I fol- 
lowed him and voted for him in 1892. But the government 
of the state and city of New York, at that time under the 
influence of Tammany Hall, was of such a character as to 
make the path of a young Democrat difficult to follow. And 
when Mr. Cleveland's own party rejected his policies; when 
the membership of the Court of Appeals was sullied by the 
appointment by Governor Flower to that court of Isaac May- 
nard in 1893, as a reward for political services; and finally 
when in 1894 the Lexow investigation revealed a sink of cor- 
ruption in the New York Police Department, I enrolled myself 
and worked as a Republican. 

The local Republican party in some portions of New York 
City was not much above Tammany in political righteousness, 
being more eager to get sops of patronage by trading with 
the dominant Democrats than to follow Republican principles. 
But in the center of Manhattan were several Assembly districts 
where the situation was different and where a Republican 
ticket with proper effort could be elected. In one of these, the 
27th Assembly District, I lived and worked as a Republican. 
I became the captain of an election district and learned what 
constant effort was required to persuade the ordinary Amer- 
ican citizen in a great city to take the trouble to exercise his 
duties as a voter. I eventually became the president of my 
Assembly district club and a member of the Republican County 
Committee of New York County. We ardent young men had 
a hard fight, for the Republican organization of the county, as 
I have just pointed out, was far below in character that which 
we believed it should be. It seemed to us of little beneficial 
effect to laboriously bring out voters on election day to vote 
for a candidate who had been selected and nominated by a 
corrupt county leader. The primaries in those days were very 
imperfect. They had no basis in law but were created simply 
by rules of the Republican organization. We saw ourselves 
habitually outvoted at conventions by the fraudulent use of 
this defective machinery. So finally \ve staged a revolt and 
when in 1897 we were thus outvoted in a convention in 
which we believed we really held the majority of votes, we 
retired from the room, nominated two well-qualified gentle- 



xx INTRODUCTION 

men as independent candidates for membership in the state 
Assembly and in the city Board of Aldermen, and successfully 
carried that ticket to victory at the subsequent election over 
the candidates of both the Republican machine and the Demo- 
cratic party. By that demonstration of power we brought the 
Republican county machine to its knees and the following 
winter a primary election law, drawn by ourselves, was by the 
force of public opinion carried through the legislature. That 
law put an end to the flagrant methods of the preceding years 
and I believe has been in effect ever since, governing the 
conduct of primaries and party elections in a way which makes 
it more possible than before for honest voters, if they are 
willing to work hard enough, to succeed in preventing machine 
control. By those early years of hard political work T gained 
a foothold in my knowledge of the elements of American 
citizenship. I could talk the language of the trade and meet 
the professionals in politics on a fair basis. 

It was during these years that I met Theodore Roosevelt, 
who had been a notable and picturesque figure in New York 
public life ever since the early eighties. His vigorous efforts 
for a cleanup in our local political life had already made him 
a marked leader among all the young men who, like myself, 
had been similarly interested. Our friendship, which began 
in 1894, lasted until his death in 1919. 

In 1894 came the Spanish war; it caught me napping. Until 
then the United States had passed through a period of pro- 
found peace ever since the end of the Civil War. Not only 
had we been free from strife ourselves, barring occasional 
small affrays with Indians on our western frontier, but during 
that time there had been no wars in the outside world of enough 
importance to attract much popular attention. The century 
was apparently closing with a growing extension of democ- 
racy, freedom, and peace throughout the world, I can remem- 
ber that that was my feeling. The thought of preparing oneself 
for possible military service hardly entered my head. So in 
April, 1898, when the United States declared war upon Spain, 
I found myself over thirty years of age and entirely untrained 
and unprepared for military service. I enlisted in Squadron A 
of the National Guard, one of the troops of which participated 
in the Puerto Rican campaign. My own troop was not selected 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

and I was relegated to the task of training myself for a possible 
spread of the war or the coming of some new war, a duty 
which until then I had wholly failed to recognize. The Spanish 
war was terminated by armistice in August of the same year. 
I remained in the squadron for nine years, rising from a 
private to a first lieutenant. It was a fine organization. It took 
its work seriously and, there being no state police in New 
York in those days, participated in not infrequent field service 
including the maneuvers at Manassas with the Regular Army 
in 1904. The main result, however, was that my attention was 
turned to possibilities and duties to which my mind had before 
been closed. 

My close friendship with Mr. Root also brought me near 
to the Army and the War Department I followed with great 
interest his work in reorganizing our military establishment, 
creating for the first time a General Staff and War College, 
and laying the foundation for the government of the Philip- 
pine Islands. In this way I was unconsciously building up a 
background of preparation for opportunities which many 
years later unexpectedly came my way in 1911, 1917, 1928, 
and 1940. 

Despite these various activities, my main occupation during 
these early years of my life was as a young and active lawyer 
in New York City. The firm of which I was a member had a 
wide and varied practice. Mr, Root being a prominent advo- 
cate and trial lawyer, my attention had been drawn early in 
that direction when I acted as his assistant in cases of impor- 
tance. Even after he left us, my interest in the art and duties 
of advocacy still remained. I became active in the Association 
of the Bar of the City of New York and became familiar with 
its historic traditions of public service. Through many channels 
I came to learn and understand the noble history of the pro- 
fession of the law. I came to realize that without a bar trained 
in the traditions of courage and loyalty our constitutional 
theories of individual liberty would cease to be a living reality. 
I learned of the experience of those many countries possessing 
constitutions and bills of rights similar to our own, whose 
citizens had nevertheless lost their liberties because they did 
not possess a bar with sufficient courage and independence to 
establish those rights by a brave assertion of the writs of 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

habeas corpus and certiorari. So I came to feel that the Amer- 
ican lawyer should regard himself as a potential officer of his 
government and a defender of its laws and constitution, I felt 
that if the time should ever come when this tradition had faded 
out and the members of the bar had become merely the servants 
of business, the future of our liberties would be gloomy indeed. 

I became familiar also with the less direct ways in which 
the practice of the law is conducive to good citizenship and 
the lawyer is a stabilizing force in the body politic. I came to 
realize how important was his trained recognition that there 
are always two sides to a question and his appreciation of the 
importance of a fair hearing in every controversy. T came to 
realize the importance played in a democracy by persuasion 
as distinguished from force or threats and to recognize the 
importance of the lawyer as a trained advocate of persuasion. 

For ten years after our marriage my wife and I lived in 
rented homes in the city, varying in size and location accord- 
ing to our means. In 1903 we established a home in the country. 
Although my profession made it necessary for me to spend most 
of my time in New York City, both she and I were at heart 
lovers of the country and desired a place where we could at 
least spend our week ends and which, as we grew older, might 
become more and more our real domicile. The spot we selected, 
in West Hills of the Township of Huntington, lies on the sum- 
mit of the central ridge of Long Island and affords glimpses 
of the sound on the north and the distant ocean on the south. 
From this fact we coined the name "Highhold." This has been 
our home for forty-four years and is the place to which we 
have retired now that our work in both New York and Wash- 
ington has ended. 

When we purchased our home it was a farm in a purely 
farming country, six miles away from Huntington, the nearest 
village. During the passing years the surrounding countryside 
has gradually filled up with homeseekers from New York. But 
our modest farmland and woods have remained the same; and 
even today I can still look from my piazza to the distant rim 
of the ocean over a stretch of countryside which, to all appear- 
ances, is the same as it was forty years ago. 

HENRY I,. STIMSON 



PART ONE 
ON MANY FRONTS 



CHAPTER I 

Attorney for the Government 



/HpHEODORE ROOSEVELT, at the end of 1905, was in 
JL full course. A year before, he had been triumphantly 
elected President in his own right; he was now preparing for 
a good fight with the Fifty-ninth Congress on railroad rates, 
pure food, and other issues of his Square Deal. His popularity 
was enormous ; his joyous self-confidence was at its peak. In 
kinetic response to his personal preaching of a new morality, 
the country was alive to the meaning of righteous government 
as it had not been for generations. 

The President himself carried the banner for new reforms. 
Meanwhile he faced a problem in consolidating gains already 
made. His first administration had seen two legal events that 
opened the door to more aggressive law enforcement: the 
Supreme Court's antitrust decision in the Northern Securities 
case, and the passage of the Elkins Act of 1903 against railroad 
rebates. To get the full value of these new opportunities, the 
President needed lawyers; he had a vigorous and effective 
Attorney General in W. H. Moody, but among the law officers 
in the lower echelons of the federal Government there was 
room for improvement. In over two years no important con- 
viction had been obtained under the Elkins Act, and it was 
common knowledge that rebates continued. T.R. wanted the 
legal help of some of "my type of men." 

In December, 1905, Stimson was invited to Washington to 
see the President His principal previous connection with 
Theodore Roosevelt had been as a fellow member of the Boone 
& Crockett Club of New York, and he traveled to the capital 
with his mind turned to problems of bear hunting. Calling 



4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

on his former senior partner, Secretary of State Root, he 
learned what the President wanted, and a few minutes later, 
sitting in the White House, he was listening to "the most com- 
manding natural leader" he ever knew. The President had a 
job for him: would he serve as United States Attorney for the 
Southern District of New York? 

The call of Theodore Roosevelt was irresistible, and Stim- 
son at once accepted. The President said he would discuss the 
matter with the patronage boss of New York, Senator Tom 
Platt, and see if it could be arranged. There was plenty of time ; 
the term of the present incumbent had still six weeks to run. 

On January n, 1906, having heard nothing further from 
the White House, Stimson read in the morning papers that 
his appointment had been announced the day before by the 
President. Apparently Senator Platt had given his consent, 
for the appointment was readily confirmed, and on February i 
Stimson took office. It was his first public office; it came un- 
sought, as did every one of his later appointments. And in 1947 
it was clear to him that this first decision was the one from 
which all his later opportunities developed. On February i, 
1906, he crossed forever the river that separates private citizens 
from public men. 

The law of the United States the federal law is applied 
and interpreted by a hierarchy of courts ranging from the 
Supreme Court in Washington through the Circuit Courts 
of Appeals to the District Courts. But the law is enforced by 
prosecutors ; no judge, however upright, can personally appre- 
hend a lawbreaker. When Stimson became United States 
Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he became the 
chief law-enforcement officer of the American national Gov- 
ernment in the most populous and important district in the 
country. At any time such office presents a challenge to the 
honor and ability of a member of the bar. And it happened 
that when Stimson took office there were two circumstances 
which gave the challenge special point. 

One was the nature of the laws now requiring enforcement. 
In older and simpler times the function of the United States 
Attorney had been one that a good lawyer could faithfully 
execute with half his time and almost no assistants. It had been 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 5 

so executed, with distinction, by Elihu Root less than a genera- 
tion before it was the first of many parallels between Mr. 
Root and his junior partner that both were thirty-eight when 
they assumed this office. But now, in 1906, the United States 
was asserting its latent strength; its lawyers were expected 
to do successful battle with the corporate giants of the time. 
No longer would it be the .major business of the United States 
Attorney to pursue petty smugglers and violators of the postal 
laws. 

And it happened that in the years since Mr. Root's incum- 
bency the office of the federal attorney had become less and 
less competent to deal with cases of such magnitude. Until 
just before Stimson's appointment the law provided that the 
United States Attorney might keep as his reward a generous 
proportion of the moneys recovered in customs cases by his 
endeavors, so that in Southern New York the job was reported 
to be worth $100,000 a year. But the incumbents, though gen- 
erally honorable men, had hardly been of the stature to com- 
mand any such sum in private practice, and it had become the 
habit of the Attorney General to retain private lawyers when- 
ever he had a case of unusual importance or difficulty, to press 
in the lower courts; his official subordinates were considered 
no match for the eminent counsel who acted for the defense in 
major cases. 

Stimson was hired (at $10,000 a year) to do two things 
first, to make war on violators of the federal law, especially 
on the new front of great corporate transgression, and second, 
to reorganize his office in such fashion that he himself, with 
his own official assistants, would try all important cases. Al- 
though he began hrs court battles before his reorganization of 
the office was complete, his final successes at the bar depended 
in so great a degree upon the men he gathered around him that 
we shall do well to look first at this question of building a team. 

When Stimson took office, he had eight assistants at an 
aggregate salary of $22,000 a year. This total was less than 
what he himself had earned in 1905 as a successful but not 
particularly outstanding young lawyer. It was therefore not 
surprising to him to find that, with two or three exceptions, 
the men in his new office were not of very high caliber com- 



6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

potent and ambitious lawyers were not attracted by the Govern- 
ment's salary scale. 

It was not easy at first to see what could be done about it. 
It might be possible to increase appropriations somewhat (and 
an increase of 50 per cent was in the end obtained), but even 
a double rate would hardly attract established lawyers earn- 
ing five or ten times as much as the best offer Stimson could 
make. Nor was it likely that among New York's practicing 
attorneys there was much unrecognized and underpaid talent 
which could be attracted by a government job at the New 
York bar real ability was quickly recognized and rewarded. 

Or was it? Granted that few good men over thirty-five 
were earning less than $10,000, what about the men even 
younger? Stimson's mind turned back to his own years as a 
junior he remembered the time in 1893 when a guaranteed 
salary of $2,000 had permitted him, after five years of waiting, 
to marry and support his wife. There were underpaid lawyers 
of high quality in New York, and he knew where to find them ; 
they were the men fresh out of law school who worked as 
juniors in the big downtown offices. They knew little about 
prosecution, it was true, but they knew about as much as he 
did himself and as much as most lawyers in private practice 
would know; perhaps indeed they would know more, for the 
things they had learned about criminal law in classrooms would 
not have faded from their minds as from those of their seniors. 
He would raid the law firms better yet, he would canvass the 
law schools and offer his jobs to men whose brains were guar- 
anteed by their deans. Perhaps with these bright young men 
he could stretch his funds a long way; perhaps they would 
feel, as he did, the challenge of the job and take its opportuni- 
ties in partial payment. 

And that was the way it turned out, although it took months 
to find and win the men he wanted. He wrote to the law 
school deans; he talked to his contemporaries to find out if 
they knew and would recommend to him particularly likely 
youngsters; he added his own zealous arguments to the gen- 
eral appeal of a chance to fight under the banner of T.R. 
and reform. When he got through he had a team of assistants 
tender in years but equal in their combined talents to any 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 7 

office anywhere, public or private. In later years Stimson 
always claimed for himself the ability to judge and choose 
men, and he was prepared to rest this claim with a recapitula- 
tion of the names of his chief assistants when he was United 
States Attorney for the Southern District. Felix Frankfurter 
~went on to the United States Supreme Court and Thomas D. 
Thacher to the highest court of New York State; Winfred 
Denison's brilliant career was tragically cut short; all of the 
others became leaders in private practice, their names perhaps 
not recognized by the general public but known and honored 
by the bar. 1 And their youth was for Stimson an advantage 
and a pleasure. They were able, eager, and loyal, and they 
were happy to be overworked. They would work in the eve- 
nings through the week, and come down to Highhold for 
the week end in relentless zest for the labor of winning cases 
for the United, States. They were gay, too, and in 1947 Stim- 
son remembered with delight the day when he had seen a 
future Supreme Court Justice in a losing foot race around 
the fields of Highhold against a future judge in the New 
York Court of Appeals. 

In later years, when the success of his term as United 
States Attorney was laid at his door in public and private 
tributes, Stimson always felt that he could properly accept 
the credit for choosing these young men, but he always added 
that the direct honor for cases won was mainly theirs: "For 
the first few months of my administration I was busy explain- 
ing the responsibilities, the duties, and high function of that 
office to all of the young men of the City of New York who 
would listen to me. The response that I then found . . . was 
one of the most inspiring lessons in public spirit and optimism 
that I have had the happiness to experience; and . . . [It is 
the] devoted work of those men and that spirit brought with 
the office to which is due whatever credit and whatever success 
it has attained." 2 

1 On a loving cup presented to Stimson by his staff -when he retired in 1909- the fol- 
lowing names appear: D. Frank Lloyd, Henry A. Wise, J. Osgood Nichols, Winfred 
T. Denison, Goldthwaite H. Dorr, Felix Frankfurter, Hugh Govern, Jr., Francis W. 
Bird, Emory R. Buckner, William S. Ball, John W. H. Grim, Thomas D. Thacher, 
Daniel D. Walton, Harold S. Deming, Robert P. Stephenson, Wolcott H. Pitkin, Jr. 

2 Speech as guest of honor at a testimonial dinner of the New York bar, May 20, 
1900. 



8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The first great group of cases which Stimson brought to 
trial were prosecutions for the offense of rebating. The rail- 
road rebate was an extraordinary device ; it had played a major 
role in the development of gigantic near monopolies. The idea 
was simple: a large corporation shipping its goods by rail 
could use its bargaining power as a major customer to force 
reimbursement of a part of the legal shipping rates charged by 
the railroad, thus obtaining an advantage over competitors. 
This reimbursement was called a rebate. In particularly fla- 
grant cases like that of the Standard Oil Company, the big 
shipper received in addition a rebate on the shipping rates paid 
by his competitors. 

Rebates had been criminal for many years -before 1903, but 
the Elkins Act of that year was the first to give effective 
weapons to Government prosecutors. Under the Elkins Act, 
the size of permissible fines was greatly increased, and the 
shipper as well as the railroad could be prosecuted. The power 
to impose large fines on the offending corporation was most 
important, for juries were much more willing to penalize 
the profiting corporations than to put unhappy corporation 
underlings in jail while the corporate profiteers went un- 
touched. But before February, 1906, there had been no suc- 
cessful prosecution for rebating. 

The first evidence for Stimson's own prosecutions came from 
the offices of William Randolph Hearst late in 1905 ; Hearst's 
peculiar compound of policies at this time included a lively 
opposition to the "Interests," and his reporters were good 
sleuths. The new United States Attorney followed up Hearst's 
leads with energy ; within five months he had brought seven 
indictments, and in the following year his office brought four- 
teen more. By the time he made his first personal report to 
the Attorney General, in July, 1907, a total of $362,000 had 
been assessed in fines for rebating, and it had become cus- 
tomary for defendants to plead guilty in order to avoid the 
painful publicity of trial and certain conviction. 

Stimson's most important rebating prosecutions were against 
the American Sugar Refining Company and railroads from 
which it had received rebates. These cases were a remarkable 
illustration to him of the problems involved in prosecuting 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 9 

big corporations. In the first place, the volume and complexity 
of the evidence was almost overwhelming; it was necessary to 
unravel the freight transactions in which the rebate was art- 
fully embedded, and then to reconstruct what actually hap- 
pened in a manner clear and convincing to the jury. This could 
be done with assurance only after such an amount of study 
that Stimson and his assistants in the end were more familiar 
with these transactions than the officers of the offending cor- 
porations. 

These cases also demonstrated with remarkable clarity both 
the stubbornness and the eventual weakness of the corporate 
wrongdoer. The New York Central Railroad and the Ameri- 
can Sugar Refining Company had been partners in rebating, as 
Stimson proved in three successive jury trials. The Railroad 
carried its case on through the Supreme Court, as if persuaded 
that such unwonted misfortune in the federal courts must be 
an accident. The Sugar Company, on the other hand, fought 
only one case and then surrendered without a trial on the re- 
maining indictments. The eminent lawyer who was counsel 
for the company came to Stimson's office bearing a white flag: 
'Damn it, Stimson, we think you're wrong on the law and 
wrong on the facts, but we can't stand the publicity.' Yet this 
same lawyer had no complaint whatever against the fairness 
and sobriety of the Government's prosecutions. It was not 
publicity in itself that he feared; it was public proof of guilt. 

The victory thus won showed the wisdom of Elihu Root's 
advice to Stimson after his first successful trial. The way to 
stop rebating for good, Root said, was to keep on hitting until 
the railroads and the shippers understood that they could and 
would be punished in the courts for their offenses. Stimson's 
successful prosecutions, followed by others in other federal 
districts, put a stop to rebating as a major corporate practice 
in a very few years. In one of the later prosecutions a fine 
of fantastic size was imposed $29,000,000 assessed by Kene- 
saw Mountain Landis in Chicago against the Standard Oil 
Company. Unlike the more modest fines imposed by the 
judges before whom Stimson argued, this great judgment was 
promptly reversed by a higher court. 

From the standpoint of their broad effect on the conduct of 



io ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

business, the rebating cases were probably the most important 
in Stimson's service as United States Attorney. But there were 
two other main undertakings which were even more demand- 
ing in their preparation and presentation, both of them striking 
examples of the kind of battle for simple morality in high 
places which was typical of so much of Theodore Roosevelt's 
era. 

One was the prosecution of Charles W. Morse for misusing 
the funds of the Bank of North America. Morse's activities 
were a major element in bringing on the financial panic of 
1907, and he was an object of public wrath long before any 
indictment was found. Morse had concealed his misapplica- 
tion of bank funds by fictitious loans to dummies of no respon- 
sibility ; the difficulty was to show that what was to all appear- 
ances a real loan was in fact a misapplication of the funds of 
the bank to a speculation by Morse himself and that the form 
of a loan had been adopted to deceive the bank examiners. 
Nor was this case made easier by the fact that Morse, the 
primary culprit, was not himself the president of the bank. 
The case was more than a year in preparation, and Stimson 
made every effort to exclude from the trial the sort of atmos- 
phere of indiscriminate vengeance which malefactors of great 
wealth so easily arouse against themselves. Morse was duly 
convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary; 
but it was typical of the plausible deceitfulness of the man 
that three years later he was pardoned on the ground of ill 
health and lived on long enough to have a further brush with 
the law. 

The second big case or rather set of cases in the later 
years was one to which Stimson always referred as "The Case 
of the Seventeen Holes." This was a case of customs fraud 
on a grand scale, and it eventually resulted in a recovery by the 
Government of about $3,500,000 in back duties. The principal 
defendant was, once again, the American Sugar Refining Com- 
pany, this time accompanied by other sugar refiners. 

The Case of the Seventeen Holes was an astonishing illus- 
tration of the level to which business ethics had fallen in this 
period. As the defense counsel summed it up, "The charge is 
that over a series of years the American Sugar Refining Com- 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT n 

pany of New York has been systematically, in season and out 
of season, from 1901 down until the close of 1907, engaged 
in stealing from the United States." 3 This had been done by 
fraudulent weighing of sugar for the determination of custom 
duties, and the method of the fraud gave the case its name. In 
seventeen large Government scales, through seventeen small 
holes, the company's checkers had "systematically" and fur- 
tively introduced wires by which they distorted the weights 
recorded by these scales ; the result was that the company, "in 
season and out of season," had paid duty on less sugar than it 
actually imported. 

Stimson spent the better part of two years of his life on these 
customs cases. The system of the seventeen holes was uncovered 
by a federal agent named Richard Parr at the end of 1907, but 
the first good jury evidence of fraud was obtained only after an 
exhaustive study of the company's records demonstrated a 
marked and continuing difference between the amount of sugar 
sold by the company and the amount on which it paid duty. 
After a year of preparation the first case, a civil suit, was 
started for recovery of duty on a small number of specified 
bales of sugar. Stimson's object here was simply to fix the fact 
of fraud by the corporation, and the verdict for the Govern- 
ment was wholly effective to this end ; only $134,000 was recov- 
ered by this verdict, but the evidence of corrupt conspiracy was 
so damning that rather than face further trial, the American 
Sugar Refining Company promptly paid $2,000,000 in back 
duties, and over $1,300,000 more was paid by other guilty 
refiners. 

Criminal prosecution of the guilty individuals was more 
difficult. The evidence available was sufficient for the indict- 
ment and conviction of the men on the docks, the tools of 
the company, and a number of these men were duly tried 
and sentenced, as were a number of conniving Government 
employees. It was much harder to bring home the crime to the 
company's senior officers. But as Stimson reported to the 
Attorney General, "Our evidence indicates that this company 
down to minute details, was virtually run by one man," the 
president; the president died only two weeks after Parr's first 

8 Quoted in the Outlook, May i, 1909. 



12 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

discovery of fraud and so escaped prosecution, but the next 
senior officer connected with the operation, the secretary- 
treasurer of the company, was duly convicted. 

Stimson resigned ,as United States Attorney in April, 1909, 
but he continued to act as a special assistant to the Attorney 
General in the customs cases for more than a year thereafter. 
The sum of what he and his assistants learned was set forth 
in a report which shows how badly the clean breezes set loose 
by Theodore Roosevelt had been needed and it should be 
noted that the frauds of the customs-house were not a subject 
of notorious exposes when Stimson entered office; in his first 
annual report he had treated customs cases as routine affairs 
deserving little attention. By 1910 both he and the public had 
learned better : 

"The foregoing investigation had made clear to me the fol- 
lowing points: 

"First: That in the administration of the Customs service 
in this Port, there has been widespread fraud and corruption 
among both the importers and the Customs officers. 

"Second: That this is not the result of the malfeasance of 
any one officer or administration, but is the result of a lax 
system during the twenty years covered by our investigation, 
and probably going back very much further, in which not 
only the administrative officers, but the laws, regulations and 
traditions of the service were at fault. 

"Third: That in spite of the abundant resources which 
have been placed at pur disposal, and of our own unceasing 
efforts for a year, it seems likely that a comparatively small 
number of the persons legally or morally guilty can be visited 
with suitable punishment through the process of the criminal 
law. ... 

"We have found that local politics have continually had a 
debasing effect upon the Customs service ; that the large sugar 
refiners have been able to exert great political influence upon 
Customs officers; that some of the local party organizations 
have been able to exercise a strong influence upon the course 
of investigations, and even of prosecutions, through their 
power over investigators and witnesses. We have found 
instances of Government agents reporting, many years ago, 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 13 

abuses which were left unpunished until our prosecutions. 
Years ago, the American Sugar Refining Company was caught 
using light trucks on its scales in the weighing of its sugar. 
Later, its employees were found tampering with the scale 
beam. So far as I can find, nothing was done to remedy this, 
except to supply Government trucks and to board up the scales. 
Not a man was prosecuted, nor were the employees of the Sugar 
Company even refused access to the scales.' 54 

The frauds themselves were bad, but this callous indifference 
to the law and the interests of the United States was even worse, 
and, having gone as far as he could with punishment under the 
law, Stimson recommended a further course of action, one 
which was to him a course of last resort, only to be used when 
there was no longer any possibility of remedy in the courts: 

"I believe, therefore, that there is great need in this matter 
for the 'punishment of publicity.' ... I believe . . . that a 
thorough ventilation of the administration of the Custom 
House would greatly assist the efforts of those officials who are 
trying now to reform it. It is difficult for a stranger to have any 
notion of the way in which this system of graft has entered into 
the conception of all of the subordinates of this service, or how 
they have stood together in their defense of it. Almost all of 
the [Government's] weighers have taken money, and even men 
otherwise right-minded will vigorously defend the ethics of 
'house money.' Such a situation needs the tonic of public indig- 
nation to set it right. 

"For this reason, it is my view that as soon as the executive 
has finished its work ; as soon as all the indictments which can 
be found through the ordinary resources of the criminal law 
have been found . . . and before public interest in the scandal 
has so subsided that the opportunity is lost, a public investiga- 
tion of the situation should be made, and the facts now held 
under ban of secrecy made a matter of public record." 4 

It is important to observe that this was emphatically not an 
effort to influence public opinion before indictment and trial. 
Stimson could fairly claim that he never tried his cases in the 
press; his steady refusal to encourage headlines before trial 

* Report to the President, April 20, 1910. 



i 4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

had indeed won him a reputation for chilly austerity among 
New York reporters. The principle here asserted was the quite 
different one that known wrongdoing must be stamped as wrong 
by public opinion ; men whose moral sense had been blunted 
must be made to understand how their actions looked to the 
people ; the hand of the hard-pressed reformer must be upheld 
by informed opinion. Public reports, of known facts were a 
fully justified and indeed indispensable weapon to this end. 

And Stimson's repugnance to sensational reports before 
trial did not extend to any feeling that proper court proceed- 
ings should go unreported. A year before, the first trial and 
conviction of the American Sugar Refining Company for 
custom fraud had gone almost completely unnoticed in the 
press. Stimson would have expected the silent treatment from 
the Herald of James Gordon Bennett; he had prosecuted Ben- 
nett for indecency in his personal columns and collected a 
$25,000 fine. He would have expected it from Joseph Pulitzer's 
World] he had brought an indictment for criminal libel 
against Pulitzer at T.R.'s request. But the general reticence 
of the press in the face of a trial whose implications went so 
deep was extremely disturbing, and he had turned on March 
8, 1909, to Editor Roosevelt of the Outlook for a redress of 
the balance. T.R. was delighted to help, and "The Case of 
the Seventeen Holes" was fully and accurately reported in 
his weekly on May i ; subsequent developments received gen- 
erous space in the New York dailies. 

Stimson did not keep in close touch with the customs service 
after 1910, but he always believed that the great fraud trials 
of 1909 and 1910 marked a turning point in the ethics of federal 
law enforcement on the docks. And, at least among customs 
officials, his own fame persisted. He and Mrs. Stimson traveled 
repeatedly to Europe in later years. On their return to New 
York they were invariably hustled through the customs with 
gingerly respect. 

On April i, 1909, Stimson resigned his office. He had served 
for more than three years, and it was time to return to private 
practice; although $10,000 a year, in the days before income 
tax, was a fair salary for a federal officer, it was less than half 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 15 

of what he had earned before, and he was feeling the pinch. 
And in a sense the most interesting part of his job was done. 
The office had been reorganized, and a new standard of effec- 
tiveness was soundly established. If he were to retain his stand- 
ing as a member of the New York bar, he must sooner or later 
return to private practice, and this seemed a suitable time. 

On May 20, in a gesture as unusual as it was heart-warming, 
the leaders of the New York bar tendered to Stimson a dinner, 
and during the after-dinner speeches they bestowed their 
praises with a lavish hand. Yet because this was praise from 
stern judges, and because it came from the men whose good 
opinion he most coveted, and most of all because it came from 
men who might have been expected to resent and belittle his 
activities against great corporations, Stimson believed that 
parts of these speeches might be taken, with appropriate dis- 
count, as a fair summary of his achievement. At the least, they 
may serve to show how fortunate he had been in winning the 
kind of reputation he desired : 

"Nor is there time to refer to the many important litigated 
cases which Stimson directed, or in which he was personally 
engaged. He had to deal with difficult and complicated ques- 
tions of law and fact. He had to solve the difficult riddles which 
Congress is constantly framing in the form of statutes. He had 
to investigate the involved accounts of great railroad systems 
and complex banking transactions. He had to uncover new 
and subtle schemes for concealing violations and evasions of 
the law. He was unaided by senior counsel. Single-handed, he 
was constantly opposed to the veterans of the bar. And he was 
almost uniformly successful, not only in obtaining verdicts and 
judgments, but in holding them. Among his adversaries were 
Mr. Choate, the leader of the American bar, Judge Wallace, 
Judge Parker, Judge Choate, Senator Spooner, John E. Par- 
sons, John G. Milburn, Austen Fox, DeLancey Nicoll, John 
M. Bowers, Wallace Macfarlane, Congressman Littlefield, 
John B. Stanchfield. . . . 

"Above all other considerations, it should be appreciated 
that in all this conspicuous and successful work, there was no 
bravado or parade or bombast, no press interviews, no calling 
the newspapermen together and communicating to them the 



1 6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

plans and exploits of his office, no beating of kettledrums, no 
eager straining after notoriety and applause, no exhibitions of 
vanity and conceit, no interjection of his own personality; only 
the plain, quiet, unostentatious, faithful, and impartial per- 
formance of his duty as he understood it. Truly may he be said 
to have redeemed the administration of justice by the federal 
authorities from the reproach and contempt into which it was 
falling, and vindicated and upheld the supremacy of the law. 
He showed how justice could be effectively and impartially ad- 
ministered by gentlemanly and dignified methods.' 55 

And from the leading lawyer of New York, Joseph H. 
Choate, who presided at the dinner, came a still more ringing 
tribute : 

"It has been the good fortune of Mr. Stimson during the 
last three years to hold that office when it was charged with 
the severest responsibilities, the most onerous duties, and the 
most complex difficulties that I think have ever surrounded 
any law office in the United States. Here center the great in- 
terests of the nation, and the cases that have come into his 
hands for presentation and argument have been of the utmost 
importance. I have observed with great interest his self-reli- 
ance, his courage, his absolutely perfect preparation, and that 
tenacity of purpose which distinguishes all the great lawyers 
that I have ever known . . . and you will bear me witness that 
he has always held his own against [the leaders of the bar] 
and has never been charged with anything oppressive, or bru- 
tal, or cruel, which so often pertains to the office of prosecut- 
ing officer." 

Stimson's success as United States Attorney is an important 
factor in his later career ; it gave him his first public reputa- 
tion and opened the door to immediate and striking opportu- 
nities. But it is not the cases tried, or the reputation won, that 
is most important for our. purpose. It is rather the effect of his 
experience on Stimson's own attitudes. This was his first 
public office, and it was a case of love at first sight, as Mrs. 
Stimson often smilingly complained in later years. How it 
struck him is best revealed in the report of his twentieth Yale 
reunion in 1908. Talking to his classmates, in the intimate 

5 Remarks of William D. Guthrie. 



ATTORNEY FOR THE GOVERNMENT 17 

informality of a small group of lifelong friends, he explained 
what it meant to him to become attorney for the United States : 
"The last two years of my life have represented a complete 
change in my professional career. The profession of the law 
was never thoroughly satisfactory to me, simply because the 
life of the ordinary New York lawyer is primarily and essen- 
tially devoted to the making of money and not always suc- 
cessfully so. There are some opportunities to do good in it. ... 
[But] it has always seemed to me, in the law, from what I have 
seen of it, that wherever the public interest has come into con- 
flict with private interests, private interest was more ade- 
quately represented than the public interest. Whenever a great 
public question has come up, in which there has been a rich 
corporation on one side and only the people on the other, it 
has seemed to me that the former always had the ablest and 
most successful lawyer to defend it, and very often the side of 
the people seemed to go almost by default. I have found com- 
paratively few successful lawyers, in modern times, putting 
their shoulders to the public wheel. . . . My private practice, 
up to the last three years, brought me constantly into contact 
with the side of the corporation, and the office I was in con- 
stantly represented the larger corporations of New York. And, 
therefore, when I was taken, as you might say, by the back of 
the neck, and started out without anticipating it and without 
expecting it, and turned loose with nothing but my oath of 
office to guide me, the first feeling was that I had gotten out 
of the dark places where I had been wandering all my life, 
and got out where I could see the stars and get my bearings 
once more ; and there has been, during those two years, a feel- 
ing that the work I was doing amounted to a little bit, or 
would amount to something if I put my whole heart into it 
and did it thoroughly. And it has made a tremendous differ- 
ence and a tremendous change in the satisfaction of my pro- 
fessional life. There has been an ethical side of it which has 
been of more interest to me, and I have felt that I could get a 
good deal closer to the problems of life than I ever did before, 
and felt that the work was a good deal more worth while. And 
one always feels better when he feels that he is working in a 
good cause." 



C H A P T E R II 

With Roosevelt and Taft 



STIMSON'S years as United States Attorney made him 
one of the trusted lieutenants of the Roosevelt administra- 
tion, and he found the end of T.R.'s term an emotional and 
somewhat saddening time. He went to Washington for the 
famous farewell luncheon of the Tennis Cabinet, and when 
the Colonel sailed for Africa, Stimson was happy to have been 
chosen to act as his agent at home in a number of small personal 
matters. The good fight continued, for Stimson at least, in the 
new administration. For the next year and a half he was largely 
occupied with the completion of his customs cases, and he 
received from President Taft and Attorney General Wicker- 
sham exactly the same wholehearted support that he had be- 
come used to with President Roosevelt and Attorneys General 
Moody and Bonaparte. 

In the three years that followed the inauguration of Mr. 
Taft, the controlling factor in American political life was the 
fluctuating relationship between the ex-President and the 
President. In the end, in 1912, the two men became open 
enemies, and the Republican party was split down the middle. 
To Stimson this result was both unnecessary and catastrophic. 
Throughout the three-year period before the break he was 
active in politics, and his weight was continuously thrown in 
favor of party and personal harmony. As a result of the events 
of those years he was twice selected for important assignments, 
once by Mr. Roosevelt and once by Mr. Taft. As a loyal 
admirer of both men, he refused to believe, then or later, that 
their differences were irreconcilable. Almost until the end, he 
hoped for peace and party unity. Almost from the beginning, 
the current ran against his hopes. 

18 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 19 

In June, 1910, when T.R. returned in triumph from his 
African expedition and his grand tour of Europe, the situation 
was already difficult. Mr. Taft had been nominated and 
elected as the direct heir of Mr. Roosevelt. The comradeship 
and affection between the two men had been famous for many 
years, and in T.R.'s Cabinet, Secretary of War Taft had been 
in many ways an assistant President. In 1908, in their explicit 
policies and principles, the two men were indistinguishable; 
as a candidate Mr. Taft repeatedly announced that his whole 
program and purpose was the consolidation of the Roosevelt 
policies. But in the first year of his term there arose two serious 
issues that served to alienate many progressive Republicans 
who idolized Colonel Roosevelt. 

One was the tariff. In later years Stimson came to believe 
that tariff revision was full of danger for all Republican presi- 
dents who dared to face it; with the best will in the world, no 
Republican seemed able to stave off the logrolling of special 
interests. In 1909, after pledging his support to tariff reduc- 
tion, Mr. Taft finally signed the notorious Payne-Aldrich 
tariff, whose extensive rate increases had been ruthlessly ex- 
posed by progressive Senate Republicans. And what happened 
to Mr. Taft in 1909 was to happen to Mr. Hoover in 1930. 
Both times it was hoped that this logrolling orgy would be 
the last one, and both Presidents set much store by their suc- 
cess in setting up executive tariff commissions to establish the 
basis for a sensible tariff. But both times their hopes proved 
unfounded. Both times the new and higher tariff promptly 
became highly unpopular throughout the country, and in both 
cases the presidents concerned were reduced to defensive 
claims that the measures might have been worse. The guilt for 
the tariff increases in fact belonged to Republicans and Demo- 
crats, East and West alike, but in both cases these increases 
became a major cause of dissension within the Republican 
party, and of organized insurgency against the President. 

In 1909 Stimson had no part in the tariff agitation; but in 
the other main issue between Taft and the Republican progres- 
sives he was for a time closely concerned. The famous Bal- 
linger-Pinchot controversy remains today a matter of debate 
among public men and historians, some holding that Secretary 



20 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of the Interior Ballinger was greatly wronged, and others that 
only the prompt and energetic public opposition of Gififord 
Pinchot and his young friend Louis R. Glavis prevented a 
disastrous reversal of the conservation policies of Theodore 
Roosevelt. What is not a matter of doubt is that the controversy 
made a permanent break between President Taf t and the more 
emotional progressives. 

Stimson's own sympathies in the Ballinger-Pinchot affair 
were with Pinchot, who was a lifelong friend. He was con- 
sulted by Pinchot and was instrumental in the selection of Mr. 
George W. Pepper to represent Pinchot before the congres- 
sional committee which ultimately heard the issues between 
Ballinger and Pinchot. In the early preparation of the case 
he also met and became friendly with Louis D. Brandeis, who 
was retained by Collier's magazine to show that its accusations 
against Ballinger were justified. The majority report of the 
committee cleared Ballinger of malfeasance, but the general 
public reaction was unfavorable to the Taft administration. 
Stimson, however, did not share in the antiadministration sen- 
timent thus stirred up. 

The Payne-Aldrich tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot case, 
in combination with a number of smaller incidents rising out of 
Mr. Taft's temperamental aversion to Western progressives, 
had laid the groundwork for a split in the Republican party 
by the time T.R. arrived from Europe. The ex-President's 
warm affection for Mr. Taft had already cooled considerably; 
real or fancied slights were almost inevitable in the changed 
relationship of the two men. T.R.'s silence about the Taft 
administration was complete, but he listened, at Oyster Bay, 
to a series of Republicans of all stripes. His intimate friend 
Henry Cabot Lodge and his son-in-law Nicholas Longworth 
came to argue the case of the Republican regulars. Pinchot 
and James Garfield came to explain to their beloved chief how 
his policies had been betrayed ; Pinchot had already told his 
story once, in a quick trip to Egypt. And Stimson came as 
Root already had in London to urge the Colonel not to get 
into the internecine party strife, but to bide his time and avoid 
a split with Taft. So far as Stimson could see at this time, it 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 21 

was this middle-of-the-road advice that accorded with T.R.'s 
own views. 

Meanwhile there was trouble brewing nearer home, in New 
York; and this nearer trouble was to bring Theodore Roose- 
velt and Stimson closer together than ever before. 

I. RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR 

The Governor of New York in 1910 was Charles Evans 
Hughes, whose investigation of insurance companies had led 
to his nomination in 1906. In four years of campaigning and 
administration Hughes had won a nation-wide reputation as a 
first-rate leader and executive ; he had demonstrated the power 
of an aggressive governor to force reform by the pressure of 
public opinion. In so doing, however, he had earned the 
violent opposition of regular politicians in his own party. In 
April, 1910, by his acceptance of appointment to the United 
States Supreme Court, he lost his greatest political weapon, 
for his approaching withdrawal from New York politics 
to the Court left him with no chance to use his great popularity 
as a threat against the machine. At the same time, in an effort 
to complete his reform program, Hughes was heavily engaged 
in a battle for the direct primary a measure feared and hated 
by machine politicians. At the Harvard Commencement late 
in June he urged T.R. to pitch in and help. Theodore Roose- 
velt was not the man to run away from a fight; the direct pri- 
mary was a cause he believed in, and his support was promptly 
and publicly given to Hughes's bill. Almost as promptly the 
bill was defeated, and T.R. chose to consider that he must fight 
to the bitter end for a victory over the forces of evil. The 
scene of battle shifted to the forthcoming September conven- 
tion of the Republican party at Saratoga, where a platform 
and a candidate would be adopted for the gubernatorial elec- 
tion in November. At this point Stimson was drawn into the 
matter. He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for 
Governor even before Colonel Roosevelt's return, and in the 
middle of June at Sagamore Hill T.R. himself had remarked 
to Stimson that he would be the best Governor, though not the 
best candidate. 



22 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

July and August Stimson spent on vacation in Europe; when 
he returned, the Colonel was in the West, making the series 
of speeches which defined his New Nationalism in terms as 
terrifying to conservatives as they were heartening to the insur- 
gents. Stimson wrote congratulating his friend and leader on 
the famous Osawatomie speech, the most terrifying of the lot. 
At the same time, true to his continuing conviction that a split 
with Mr. Taft would be catastrophic, he urged the Colonel to 
speak as warmly as possible about the Washington administra- 
tion. The reason for this position is important, for it is central 
to Stimson's political thinking: 

"I was much pleased that you enumerated a definite and 
constructive radical platform at Osawatomie. 

"The only thing I wished to say particularly is that it seems 
to me vitally important that the reform should go in the way 
of a regeneration of the Republican party and not by the 
formation of a new party. To me it seems vitally important 
that the Republican party, which contains, generally speaking, 
the richer and more intelligent citizens of the country, should 
take the lead in reform and not drift into a reactionary posi- 
tion. If, instead, the leadership should fall into the hands of 
either an independent party or a party composed, like the 
Democrats, largely of foreign elements and the classes which 
will immediately benefit by the reform, and if the solid busi- 
ness Republicans should drift into new obstruction, I fear the 
necessary changes could hardly be accomplished without much 
excitement and possibly violence. ... I think the attempt 
to reform the Republican party can be made successful and 
that that should be the aim. ... I have heard . . . that even 
in advocating certain policies supported by Taft you studiously 
avoid his name. I have denied that there could have been any 
such purpose. But it seems to me that if you could avoid this 
criticism it would go a long way in the direction above men- 
tioned. It would emphasize the continuity of the reform inside 
the Republican party, of which Taft is now the official head." 1 
Colonel Roosevelt did not answer this letter directly, but in 
conversations on Long Island during September Stimson 
found no reason to believe that his advice was unacceptable. 

1 Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, September 2, 1910. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 23 

The immediate problem was in New York. Although Stim- 
son had originally hoped that T.R. would stay out of the 
battle in the state, he supported Colonel Roosevelt's campaign 
for election as temporary chairman of the Saratoga convention. 
The issue in New York was to him essentially the same as in 
the nation it was a battle to win the Republican party to the 
cause of reform. The objection to fighting it in September, 
1910, was tactical; Republican machine opposition to the 
direct primary, together with some unsavory political scandals 
of the previous winter in Albany, added to the evident trend 
away from the party in power throughout the country, made 
a defeat in November seem inevitable for any Republican. 
This objection did not disturb Stimson for himself he was 
not impressed by the talk of his availability as a candidate 
but he hated to see the ex-President hazard his great name 
and invaluable prestige in a losing fight. Only after the Colonel 
had by his own decision become the leader of the fight did 
Stimson enlist as his ardent supporter there was then no other 
possible course. The object of the battle was now a simple 
one to elect Theodore Roosevelt as temporary chairman at 
Saratoga over the machine candidate, a personally estimable 
stand-pat conservative who was also the Vice President of 
the United States. Vice President Sherman was not openly 
endorsed by President Taft, but there was clearly tension in 
Washington as the battle developed. 

The Saratoga convention was to open on September 27. 
Well before that date, it became clear to the reformers that 
Roosevelt was probably going to win his fight; speculation 
turned to the question of his choice of a candidate for Gover- 
nor, and Stimson's name came forward more prominently than 
before he was known as one of T.R.'s particular proteges in 
New York. So on September 24 Stimson raised the subject 
with the Colonel : 

"I told him that during the last day or two hints had com6 
to me indicating that the New York [city] leaders felt that 
I was probably going to be the candidate, and I wanted to warn 
him particularly against my candidacy as affecting his own 
prestige and leadership in the country. I said to him, 'If I run 
and am defeated, as looks now almost certain, it will be made a 



24 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

defeat for you. Our relations have been so close that I will be 
taken to be your personal candidate, and when I am defeated 
it will be used to injure your leadership.' He said, 'I have con- 
sidered all that. So far as my own personal position is con- 
cerned I do not care in the least. I should be proud to go down 
fighting for you. On the other hand, I do realize the disad- 
vantage and the chance for attack which lies in our close 
association. For that reason I have felt that an upstate man 
should be chosen. But the trouble is that there is no one who 
measures up to the situation. We cannot put up a man of whom 
it will be said that we put him up to be defeated. We believe 
we are fighting for a big issue, and to do a thing like that 
would stultify us at once. I am still trying to find a good up- 
state man.' " 2 

At Saratoga on the twenty-sixth the matter came up again, 
in a meeting between Colonel Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Stim- 
son. As Stimson recalled it, "Root said . . . , 'Isn't there some 
way we can keep Harry out of this? I hate to have him sacri- 
ficed.' Roosevelt then said, c So do I ; but I have the feeling that 
with a good fight a licking won't necessarily hurt him.' Then 
Root said, That might be so if it wasn't too bad a licking; but 
I am afraid we are in for a terrible licking, and then it will be 
different. I think the country has made up its mind to change 
parties. It is like a man in bed. He wants to roll over. He 
doesn't know why he wants to roll over, but he just does ; and 
he'll do it.' Roosevelt said, 'That's so. I think you are 
right.' " 3 Either that evening or twenty-four hours later 
Stimson had a further long talk alone with Root, "discussing 
the conditions under which it would or would not be my 
duty to run"; Stimson and Root agreed that if the party 
leaders on the reform side thought Stimson their best 
candidate, he should accept the nomination. But his own 
preference was strongly against running, and he would make 
no effort whatever to win support. On this understanding 
Stimson left the matter in the hands of his oldest counselor and 
guide. On the twenty-seventh T.R. was triumphantly elected 

2 Personal Recollections of the convention and campaign of 1910, probably written 
about December, 1910. 

3 Personal Recollections of 1910. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 25 

as temporary chairman, and that night, in a hotel room very 
probably smoke-filled, he and his colleagues in the battle 
against reaction met for several hours ; Stimson, waiting out- 
side, went to bed. Some time after midnight he was awakened 
and told that he was the choice of the reform leaders as candi- 
date for Governor. To put it bluntly, he was T.R.'s hand- 
picked candidate, selected as the best man to run with credit 
in a losing cause. But it was his cause as well as the Colonel's, 
and he cheerfully accepted the nomination. Like almost every 
other candidate in history, he promptly forgot his gloomy fore- 
bodings of the week before and set out to win, with the ener- 
getic support of the greatest campaigner of the time, his friend 
and leader Theodore Roosevelt. At the worst, it would be a 
good fight. 

Nothing about the campaign of 1910 in New York was 
so important for Stimson's life as the simple fact that he did 
not win. The defeat did not do him any important damage, 
but victory would almost surely have opened to him a strong 
possibility of great advancement, even toward the White 
House. At the least it would have made him a commanding 
national figure at a very early age. And possibly this was the 
thought that struck him with particular force in 1947 his 
victory, which would have been T.R.'s victory too, might have 
served to sustain that great leader in his original inclination to 
work out the New Nationalism within the Republican party. 
But Stimson and Colonel Roosevelt did not win. 

The principal and overriding reason for their defeat was 
that mysterious but evident tendency which Elihu Root had 
described in September every so often the people decide to 
roll over. The political ineptness of Mr. Taft, as shown in the 
Payne-Aldrich tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, 
certainly contributed; the dubious conduct of the machine 
Republicans in Albany contributed more; the high cost of 
living was a major issue, and it was quite useless for Stimson to 
point out, as he repeatedly did, that the Governor of New 
York State had no influence whatever on this item. In Novem- 
ber, 1910, the people rolled over, and it was small consolation 
that in New York they rolled less far than in most other states. 



26 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The campaign in New York was fought on very few issues. 
The Republicans fought for a continuation of the Hughes 
policies and against Tammany control. The Democrats 
and many conservative Republicans fought against T.R. 
Over and over again they argued that Stimson for Governor 
in 1910 meant Roosevelt for President in 1912. When they 
wearied of this chant, the Democrats would unconcernedly 
blame the Republicans of New York for all the failures of the 
Taft administration, and then they would discourse on the 
extravagance of Governor Hughes, promising meanwhile to 
extend the benefits which Hughes had instituted at some public 
expense. It was not, on the Democratic side, a brilliant cam- 
paign. The Democrats knew perfectly well that they were 
going to win, and their candidate, an honorable papermaker 
named John A. Dix, who later proved almost as subservient 
to Tammany as Stimson foretold in his speeches, conducted a 
front-porch campaign, safe, dignified, and not talkative. 

Meanwhile Stimson was trying to make up by energy what 
he lacked in experience. He had rung doorbells and helped to 
organize the vote in a single Assembly district, but a state-wide 
campaign was wholly new to him, and the arts of the campaign 
speaker were not his natural forte. Years later Felix Frank- 
furter, who traveled with Stimson in his special train as brain 
trust and factotum, could recall the high-pitched but friendly 
scolding of T.R., 'Darn it, Harry, a 'campaign speech is a 
poster, not an etching!' But in four weeks of ceaseless speech- 
making, six or seven times a day, Stimson gradually improved. 
If he lacked the explosive and contagious enthusiasm of T.R. 
and perhaps also the experience and skill of Hughes, he was 
nevertheless, he always insisted, a reasonably competent cam- 
paigner. His principal problem was to prove by personal force 
that he was not just Theodore Roosevelt's puppet, and he 
gradually developed a glowing paragraph which seldom failed 
to win applause. These were the days before the radio, when 
one good speech with variations would last for most of a 
campaign, and the following apostrophe, taken from a speech 
delivered at Amsterdam, is typical of dozens very much like 
it: "My opponents have been shouting through the state one 
argument against me ... they say you must not vote for Stim- 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 27 

son because he is Roosevelt's man [prolonged applause]. . . . 
If they mean when they say that that I admire the standards of 
courage and integrity and civic righteousness which Theodore 
Roosevelt has shown for thirty years [applause], if they mean 
that, why then I am frank to say that I am Roosevelt's man and 
I am proud of it [applause]. But if they mean something else, 
if they mean something very different, if they mean that if you 
should elect me Governor of this state I would administer this 
great office according to any other suggestion or any other 
dictation than my own will and my own oath of office, why 
then I say to you that I am not only not Mr. Roosevelt's man 
but I am not any man's man [applause] and I think you will 
find that Colonel Roosevelt, from his experience with me as 
District Attorney when he was President, will be the first one 
to tell you so [applause]." 

Many of Stimson's friends argued that Colonel Roosevelt's 
energetic help was doing him more harm than good. Stimson 
wholly disagreed. It was true that Roosevelt-haters in New 
York City were giving their money to the Democrats ; it was 
true that Stimson's father no longer found it pleasant to visit his 
club because so many of the members were rabid about the 
socialist Roosevelt and his tool Stimson ; it was true that the 
daily press of New York City, with two exceptions, was 
opposed to Stimson because he was Mr. Roosevelt's friend. 
All these considerations together did not outweigh the magic 
of T.R.'s appeal to the ordinary voter. Before the Saratoga 
convention Stimson heard a wise professional politician esti- 
mate that the Republicans would lose in November by 300,000 
votes; the difference between this gloomy forecast and the 
actual margin of 66,000 he thought mainly attributable to 
the campaigning of Theodore Roosevelt. 

The real source of damage within the party, as Stimson saw 
it, was not Mr. Roosevelt but the regular Republican machine. 
The battle of Saratoga ended with a closing of ranks on the 
part of such regulars as James Wadsworth and Job Hedges, 
but there were others who did not so readily forgive. Stim- 
son's zealous and devoted friends among the younger Repub- 
licans did what they could to organize and manage his cam- 
paign, but many of the professionals on whom they relied were 



28 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

cool and distant. And many Republicans in the Washington 
administration felt that a Stimson victory would be of no value 
to Mr. Taft. The President himself was cordial in his public 
support, but he would have been more than human if he had 
not felt that victory in New York was less important than 
victory in states where T.R. was not so active. 

At the same time, oddly enough, the more ardent progres- 
sives were temporarily annoyed at both Stimson and Colonel 
Roosevelt for compromising with the regulars. The Saratoga 
platform contained a hearty endorsement of the Taft adminis- 
tration, and both Stimson and the Colonel treated their fight 
as part of the general Republican cause. Gifford Pinchot's 
personal loyalty was great enough to bring him to an offer of 
speech-making support, but he coupled his offer with a warn- 
ing that he must be free to attack President Taft, and Stimson 
did not accept his help. So hard it was already, in 1910, even 
in a state election, to keep party harmony among the deeply 
divided Republicans. 

But it was an energetic campaign, and Stimson enjoyed it. 
He knew his cause was good ; he had nothing to lose ; he was 
proud of both his friends and his enemies. When the election 
returns rolled in and he realized he was beaten, he found him- 
self undismayed. He promptly congratulated Governor-elect 
Dix and announced his conviction that the fight for progressive 
policies had just begun. The defeat of 1910 was a setback, but 
not a major disaster. The major disaster lay ahead, but the 
main immediate effect of the campaign on Stimson himself 
was that it gave him within six months a new and unexpected 
opportunity for service. In spite of his eloquence, he was 
marked as "Roosevelt's man," and as such he had acquired a 
particular value for William Howard Taft. 

2. SECRETARY OF WAR 

In the spring of 1911 President Taft accepted the resigna- 
tion of Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson, who wished to give 
more attention to his private affairs. Casting about for a new 
Secretary, he was bound to consider the internal condition of 
the Republican party. He knew that the old personal affection 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 29 

between himself and Theodore Roosevelt was dead ; both had 
done thoughtless things and spoken incautiously among 
friends, and partisans of both had been unkindly quick to kin- 
dle the consuming fires of mutual mistrust. But the end of a 
friendship was not the same thing as the destruction of the 
party. T.R. had greatly disturbed the President with his 
speeches in the summer of 1910, but during the campaign in 
the autumn he had been less of a maverick, and after the elec- 
tion Oyster Bay became very quiet indeed. The President 
wanted nothing so much as assurance that Colonel Roosevelt 
would stay out of the 1912 campaign; one way to attain this 
result might be to disarm the Colonel's criticism by bringing 
into the administration some men of his type. When Secretary 
Ballinger resigned in March, 191 1, Mr. Taft appointed Walter 
L. Fisher, a distinguished conservationist, to be Secretary of 
the Interior, and in May, against the advice of conservatives 
in the Cabinet, he offered the job of Secretary of War to Stim- 
son. 

"The first intimation that I received that my name was being 
considered for appointment came through Senator Root. He 
asked me to meet him uptown in New York ; he told me that 
Mr. Dickinson was about to resign and that my name was 
under consideration by the President. I think that this was on 
Monday, May 8th. I asked him his advice and he advised me to 
accept the appointment. ... I think on Wednesday night, I 
received a long-distance message from Hilles, asking if I could 
meet him the following morning in New York. I met him at 
the Manhattan Hotel. He told me that Mr. Taft was prepared 
to offer me the appointment if I would accept. I raised the 
question of my political sympathies. I told Hilles that Mr. 
Taft ought to know that in the Pinchot-Ballinger issue I had 
strongly sympathized with Mr. Pinchot and still did so. Hilles 
said tjiat he did not think that this would interfere with the 
appointment as that was over, but that he would talk it over 
with Mr. Taft. ... He said 'The President thinks that you 
are in general sympathy with his attitude which is of a middle- 
of-the-road progressive, not running to extreme radicalism on 
one side or to conservatism on the other.' I told him I thought 
that was true. I further said that before I could answer defi- 



30 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

nitely, I must consult four persons : my wife, my father, my law 
partner, and Colonel Roosevelt. Mr. Hilles told me that the 
President was anxious to have the matter settled as soon as pos- 
sible, and I told him I would communicate with these people 
as soon as possible. I did this at once, seeing my partner that 
morning, my wife that evening, and Colonel Roosevelt either 
that evening or the following evening. My father was at sea 
and I communicated with him by wireless, receiving finally 
his reply on Friday evening, May i2th, when I at once tele- 
phoned to Washington. My acceptance of the appointment was 
announced in the papers of Saturday morning, May i3th. 
Hilles told me over the telephone before final acceptance that 
he had reported my statement about Pinchot to the President, 
and he had said that he did not consider that any objection to 
my appointment." 4 

This consultation with his closest advisers became Stimson's 
habit in all later personal decisions of this sort. In this case his 
wife and his father were the two people nearest to him per- 
sonally; his partner, Bronson Winthrop, was the man whose 
generous understanding of public service was to make possible 
repeated absences from the law offices in Liberty Street; and 
Theodore Roosevelt was the man to whom he owed first 
loyalty in matters of politics. The first three gave the answer 
they had given in 1906 and would give again in other cases 
he must accept any call to public service which attracted him 
as an opportunity for accomplishment. The interview with 
T.R., reaching the same conclusion, had a special significance. 

"Mrs. Stimson and I motored over to Sagamore Hill to tell 
him of Mr. Taft's offer to me of the position of Secretary of 
War and to ask his advice in regard to it. We found them at 
home in the evening alone and had one of the most delightful 
visits that we have ever had with them. Mr. Roosevelt warmly 
and -strongly urged me by all means to accept the position. In 
everything he said he indicated a warm personal interest in my 
welfare. Mrs. Stimson evidenced a good deal of reluctance 
about joining the Taf t administration mentioning how difficult 
it would be for her to feel any great loyalty toward that 

4 Personal Reminiscences, 1911-1912, written March, 1913, hereafter called "Rerjninis- 
cences, 1911-1912." 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 31 

administration. Roosevelt at once said that the question of 
loyalty is settled 'by Harry's doing his best in the War Depart- 
ment so as to help make Mr. Taft's administration a success.' 
As regards my interest he said that he had regard for my future 
and that it would be much better for me to be spoken of as ex- 
Secretary of War than merely as the defeated candidate for 
Governor. 

"I went away with the feeling that I virtually carried his 
commission to do my best to make Mr. Taft's administration 
a success. 

"I find this statement in a letter from him, dated May 31, 
about two weeks afterwards : 

" 'I am more and more pleased with your having accepted 
the appointment and Gifford Pinchot and Jim Garfield feel 
the same way. Both of them are still inclined to be entirely off 
in matters political but they are nothing like as violent as they 
were six months ago one symptom is that they now admit that 
both you and I have a substratum of decency in our composi- 
tion.' " 5 

So on May 12, having received the approval of all those 
whose approval mattered most, Stimson accepted Mr. Taft's 
offer, and set out to be a loyal member of the Taf t administra- 
tion. This decision he never regretted; it had the effect of 
placing him in a peculiarly difficult position in the next year, 
when Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft became open antagonists, 
and what he suffered in that position we must shortly tell. But 
it also gave him two years of service with the United States 
Army, an institution which he devotedly admired, and this 
was a preparation of enormous value for labors thirty years 
later. And, of course, it made him a Cabinet officer at the age 
of forty-three ; he would have been chilly indeed if he had not 
felt as he rode the train to Washington a deep glow of pride 
and a sense of high challenge. 

The United States Army in 1911 was an organization of 
4,388 officers and 70,250 enlisted men. About a quarter of this 
formidable force was on "foreign service" in American posses- 
sions the Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, the Canal Zone, and 

5 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



3 2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Porto Rico; the rest was scattered in fifty posts within the 
United States. It was a profoundly peaceful army, in a nation 
which saw no reason to suppose that there was any probability 
of war for decades, if ever. The office of Secretary of War had 
great prestige ; it had been occupied in recent years by Elihu 
Root and President Taft. But it would probably be fair to say 
that, so far as his strictly military duties were concerned, the 
Secretary of War was in 1911 by a good deal the least impor- 
tant officer in the Cabinet except in the opinion of those few 
who, like Stimson himself, had a lively interest in military 
affairs. 

The men deeply interested in the Army, in 1911, may be 
divided into two categories those who lived by it and those 
who lived for it. This division may not be scientifically exact 
or even wholly fair, but it accurately reflects the situation as 
Stimson saw it after a few months of hard work and study. 
The Army was going through the pangs of a long-delayed 
modernization, and in almost every issue before the Secretary 
of War there was a sharp division between men who preferred 
the old way the way of traditional powers and privileges 
and men whose eyes were fixed on the ideal of a modernized 
and flexible force, properly designed for the fulfillment of its 
assignment as the army of a democracy at peace. 

The basic instrument for the modernization of the Army, 
in 1911, was the General Staff, and it was therefore natural 
that Stimson's first and most important battle should have 
been for the protection of this body and its authority. The 
General Staff of the American Army was the creation of 
Elihu Root, and Stimson always ranked this achievement as 
one of the two or three most important in all the long and 
brilliant career of the ablest man he ever knew. The General 
Staff was a German invention, but Mr. Root's adaptation of 
it was designed to meet the peculiar problems of the Ameri- 
can Army. His General Staff, organized under a Chief of 
Staff responsible to the Secretary of War and the President, 
was designed to meet three requirements: civilian control in 
the executive branch, sound general planning, and constant 
cross-fertilization between the line of the Army and its high 
command in Washington. Failure to meet any one of these 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 33 

basic requirements after the Civil War had made the Army 
a stultified plaything of ambitious generals and their political 
friends in Congress. By changing the title of the Army's rank- 
ing officer from "Commanding General" to "Chief of Staff," 
Root emphasized the principle of civilian control by the 
President as Commander in Chief the "Chief of Staff" held 
his power as the President's agent, not as an independent com- 
mander. By establishing his General Staff free of routine 
administrative duties Root emphasized its basic function of 
policy making. By providing for limited terms of service for 
its members, he insured a constant movement of officers from 
the Staff to the line and back. He thus struck the first blow in 
a campaign to end forever the authority of armchair officers 
who had never commanded troops, but who knew their way 
around Capitol Hill. Ten years later it fell to Stimson to 
finish this particular job. 

The Chief of Staff of the Army when Stimson became Sec- 
retary on May 22, 1911, was Major General Leonard Wood. 
This remarkable officer Stimson held as the finest soldier of 
his acquaintance until he met another Chief of Staff thirty 
years later. Wood had started as an Army surgeon, but his 
energy and driving zest for command had brought him into 
the line of the Army. He had commanded the Rough Riders 
of Theodore Roosevelt, and in Cuba he had won a great 
reputation as a colonial administrator. Wood was imagina- 
tive, relatively young, and as yet unhardened by the bitter 
disappointments which marked his later career. He and Stim- 
son at once became warm personal friends; they shared an 
enthusiasm for horses and for hunting ; together they inspected 
Army camps in the West and combined business with pleasure. 
In Washington they fought together in defense of the General 

Staff. 

Their principal adversary was Major General Fred C. Ains- 
worth, the Adjutant General. Ainsworth, another doctor, had 
risen to high office in Washington by reason of his great ad- 
ministrative skill and his even greater skill in dealing with 
Congressmen. He was a master of paper work and politics, but 
unfortunately he was greedy for power, and he hated the whole 
concept of the General Staff, just as he disapproved of all the 



34 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ideas for Army reform which attracted the sympathetic sup- 
port of Stimson and Wood. The Adjutant General in law and 
principle was subordinate to the Chief of Staff, but in practice 
Ainsworth had been able to preserve his authority under 
Wood's predecessors ; in some respects, because of his influence 
with Congressmen, he had been the most powerful officer in 
the War Department. Wood, taking office in 1910, set out to 
become master in his own house. 

When Stimson arrived in Washington, Wood and Ains- 
worth were already at loggerheads; as an incident of their 
conflict, there was in session a board of officers (headed by 
Ainsworth himself) to study the administrative procedures 
of the War Department. This apparently harmless subject 
was full of explosive possibilities, for Ainsworth regarded 
himself as the high priest of Army administration, and any 
opinion contrary to his own would not be well received. Late 
in 1911, the board of officers reported; the minority report 
recommended the abolition of the bimonthly muster roll. This 
was a radical recommendation, for the muster roll was the 
Army's basic administrative record. But the minority report 
was approved by Wood and then by Stimson ; they believed 
that the new methods would give fully satisfactory results and 
save much time. Ainsworth did not agree, and on February 
9, 1912, after a six- week delay, he submitted his views to Wood 
in a memorandum so grossly insubordinate that as soon as he 
read it Stimson realized that the time for drastic action had 
come. Once before he had been forced to warn Ainsworth 
against insubordination. Now in a bitter outburst against "in- 
competent amateurs" Ainsworth laid down a challenge which 
could not be ignored. The memorandum went so far as to im- 
pugn the honor and good faith of any who would tamper with 
the muster roll. 

"I glanced at it [Ainsworth's memorandum] and at once 
seeing its character directed Wood to turn it over to me and 
to pay no further attention to it. I told him I would attend to 
it myself and for him to keep his mouth shut. 

"The only member of the Department whom I consulted 
was Crowder, Judge Advocate General. I asked him to read 
the memorandum and advise me what disciplinary measures 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 35 

the law allowed. He came to my house and we discussed it. He 
suggested two ways of treating it, one by administrative pun- 
ishment and the other by court-martial. He himself started to 
recommend the administrative punishment. I told him no, that 
I intended to court-martial him. ... I told him I proposed 
to find out whether the Army was ready to stand for the kind 
of language that General Ainsworth had used as proper 
language for a subordinate to use to a superior. I intended to 
put it up to the general officers of the Army to say whether 
that was proper or not. I told him also that I preferred to use 
a big gun rather than a little gun. When I had to deal a blow, 
I believed in striking hard. He loyally acquiesced in my 
decision and under my direction at once commenced the 
formulation of charges and selection of a court. I also con- 
sulted the President and Mr. Root. Both concurred with me 
in thinking that a court-martial should be ordered. The Presi- 
dent said to me: 'Stimson, it has fallen to you to do a dirty 
job which your predecessors ought to have done before you.' 

"Root said that when a man pulls your nose there is nothing 
to be done but to hit him. . . . 

"I concluded . . . that a measure of discipline must be 
taken at once if at all and I therefore relieved Ainsworth as 
soon as the paper could be prepared. 

"As soon as he was relieved, telegrams were sent to a num- 
ber of retired general officers in various parts of the country, 
asking them if they would serve on a court-martial which the 
President was about to call. We had to call upon retired officers 
because there were no others of rank equal to that of the 
defendant. Knowing Ainsworth's reputation as a fighter, I 
rather expected that he would stand trial, although I realized 
from my previous experience as District Attorney how much 
greater that responsibility would appear to him than it would 
to an outsider. I think I had rather brighter hopes than the 
average officers around me that Ainsworth might lie down, 
but I recognized that it was a good deal of a gamble. 

"Next day we were sitting in Cabinet meeting, when the 
messenger brought word that Senator Warren wanted to see 
the President on a very important matter. The President 
stepped out, was gone a few minutes, and came back and said 



3 6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

to me 'Ainsworth wants to retire. How is it? Good riddance?' 
I said 'Yes, Mr. President, provided it is done at once and 
provided he apologizes.' He stepped out again and in the 
interval I got Root on the telephone at the Senate, told him 
that Ainsworth proposed to surrender and retire and asked 
his advice as to whether I should accept it. He said, 'By all 
means; best possible result. 5 

a The President came back again and said, 'He will get right 
out but he will not apologize.' I said, 'I think you had better 
let him get out; we will waive the apology.' I stepped into the 
President's room with him that time and saw Warren, who 
had brought the message. I told him that I thought he had 
done a good piece of work for the Army. He told me that he 
had had difficulty in getting Ainsworth to agree to retire ; that 
Ainsworth wanted to fight, but that his friends advised him 
not to run the risk. 

"As far as Ainsworth's reputation in the Army was con- 
cerned, his retirement under fire greatly injured it. Many 
officers have since said to me Why, we always thought that 
he was a fighting man, but we have had no use for him since 
he crawled.' His retirement then simplified matters in the 
Department. . . . Before I left office in March, 1913, . . . 
very important reforms in the methods of administration were 
well under way, reforms which had been perfectly impossible 
to accomplish when General Ainsworth was present. But more 
than that, it enabled the department to work as a harmonious 
team and it dealt a death blow to the idea that any one mem- 
ber of that team could run his office for his own personal 
advancement." 6 

The relief of Ainsworth was a vital victory for the whole 
concept of the General Staff. It insured the power of the Chief 
of Staff against all bureau chiefs, and in this sense it expanded 
his power far beyond that of the commanding generals of 
former days. It also asserted and defined the duty of the Presi- 
dent and the Secretary of War under the new system they 
might have any Chief of Staff they desired, but they must 
support the officer of their choice. There have been struggles 
for power and personal feuds in the War Department since 
1912, and there are still many matters of tradition over which 

6 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 37 

the wise man does not ride roughshod, but since the relief of 
Ainsworth no important challenge has been given to the final 
authority of the Chief of Staff, under the Secretary and the 
President. Even the great Pershing, field commander of the 
entire fighting Army in 1918, learned that in the making of 
long-range decisions he was subordinate to the Chief of Staff 
in Washington. 

But if the relief of Ainsworth set a fine precedent, and won- 
derfully clarified the situation inside the War Department, 
it did not help Stimson and Wood one bit with their second 
great difficulty relations with Congress. Ainsworth had two 
powerful friends in key positions Representative Hay, Demo- 
crat, the chairman of the House Committee on Military Af- 
fairs, and Senator Warren, Republican, chairman of the 
parallel committee in the Senate. The alliance between Army 
bureaucrats and influential Congressmen was useful to both 
sides; Ainsworth's promotions had come mainly by congres- 
sional fiat, while Army appropriations for post construction, 
river and harbor work, and other undertakings could be and 
were distributed as political rather than strategic purposes 
dictated. Thus the relief of Ainsworth was more than a per- 
sonal affront to his congressional friends ; it was a direct chal- 
lenge to the whole concept of congressional government it 
asserted the national interest and the authority of the execu- 
tive branch against the parochial pork barrel and the authority 
of Congress. For their audacity in this attack on congressional 
power, Stimson and Wood paid the price of constant conflict. 
But by continued boldness they were able to hold their own. 
When a conference committee of Congress put a rider into 
the Army Appropriation Bill which would have disqualified 
Wood for service as Chief of Staff, Stimson wrote and Presi- 
dent Taft signed a stinging veto, and the country applauded. 
The congressional plotters, placed on the defensive much to 
their surprise, for they had not supposed that the President 
would run the risk of leaving his soldiers unpaid were forced 
to repass the bill without the offensive clause. In this affair as 
in others President Taft showed clearly both his reluctance 
to fight and his essential courage in a pinch. He tried hard to 
believe that an amended rider would not disqualify Wood, but 



38 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Stimson got a direct admission of his purpose from Repre- 
sentative Hay, who was an honest man, and the President at 
once promised a second veto, even though the support of 
Senator Warren seemed essential to his success in the approach- 
ing Republican Convention at Chicago. He was on solid 
ground ; Warren and Hay yielded, and whatever political ad- 
vantage there was in the matter accrued to the President. And 
the Army did not go unpaid, for while the legislators were 
removing their monkey wrench, they continued by joint 
resolution the appropriations of the previous year. This expe- 
rience gave Stimson a lifelong belief that the way to deal with 
congressional riders is to veto the whole bill and let public 
opinion take its angry and accurate course. 

The issue of authority was thus settled, in principle; in 
practice, however, substantial power remained with Congress, 
through its control of appropriations. It was not always neces- 
sary for the legislators to resort to flagrantly unjustified riders, 
and as the administration lacked a disciplined majority or 
indeed any majority at all in the House of Representatives 
Stimson was not able to secure approval of such ardently 
advocated reforms as the consolidation of the numerous small 
posts into a few large ones, strategically located with an eye 
to climate and training facilities. Nor was he able to prevent 
a cut in the appropriations for the General Staff, which did not 
become an unchallenged and fully honored institution until 
after World War I. Under heavy prodding Congress accepted 
his principle of an organized reserve, into which all regulars 
should pass after completing their enlistment, but the principle 
was so hedged with reservations that after two years only 
sixteen names appeared on the reserve roster. In summary, 
Stimson was able to defend the Army against Congress, but 
not to use the congressional power as an agent of constructive 
change. 

Fortunately there remained a considerable outlet for his 
energy in the executive authority of the Secretary, and the 
outstanding advance of his term as Secretary of War was 
made as a purely executive decision. This was the tactical or- 
ganization of the Army inside the United States. Prior to 
1912, units of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and coast artillery 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 39 

were commanded by the senior administrative officer of each 
area, without any regard for their tactical grouping in the 
event of war. This meant that a brigadier general might have 
under his command several companies of immovable coast 
artillery troops, a battalion or two of infantry, and a cavalry 
squadron. Yet these scattered infantry and cavalry units were 
the only mobile tactical force in the country, and in the event 
of a crisis they would be the field force of the Army. What 
Stimson and Wood did has in retrospect the simple logic of 
elementary prudence; they ordered a reorganization under 
which the command of units corresponded with their probable 
tactical employment in the event of emergency infantry divi- 
sions were organized and commanders named. The troops could 
not be brought together in one place, for lack of money, but at 
least on paper the Army was given an organization suit- 
able for quick action. The result was that in early 1913, when 
there was an alarm along the Mexican border, a single order 
from Washington was sufficient to concentrate a division of 
field service troops at Galveston, Texas. Before the reorganiza- 
tion the same result could have been achieved only by hun- 
dreds of orders and the ad hoc construction of an entirely new 
command. Yet this elementary application of military common 
sense was accepted by the line of the Army only after a pro- 
longed and carefully organized series of deliberations, includ- 
ing a conference at Washington of every active general officer 
in the Army. 

The Army of 1912 was slowly awakening after a slumber 
of nearly fifty years which had been only briefly disturbed by 
the absurd confusion of the Spanish war. Men like Root and 
Stimson, learning to follow the principles and recommenda- 
tions of a small group of devoted and progressive officers, 
found themselves confronted by the vast inertia of somnolent 
inbreeding. The Army, as progressive officers understood it, 
was a small nucleus of professionals who must be organized 
and prepared to do two things : to fight at once in case of war 
and almost more important to expand indefinitely by en- 
rolling citizen soldiers. Wood and Stimson had no patience 
with the notion that it took three years to make a soldier 
Wood insisted he could do it in six months, and five years later 



40 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

he proved his point by producing the magnificent Sgth Divi- 
sion of the National Army. What he and Stimson envisioned 
in 1912 was a small but highly trained Army, concentrated in 
eight large posts where training in the combined arms could 
be carried out, with short enlistments and a heavy turnover, 
so that military skills might be diffused through an increas- 
ing proportion of the population. It was from Wood that 
Stimson first learned to think of the Regular Army as a 
focus of professional skill from which military training might 
be given to all the nation's manhood. Wood understood the 
Army; he also knew how to interpret the Army to civilians, 
and he knew how to make and honor good civilian soldiers. 
To the men who thought of the Army as a small and select 
club, the men who regarded military skill as a sacerdotal se- 
cret imparted only at West Point, all of Wood's preaching 
was dangerous nonsense. The Old Guard of the Army, rein- 
forced by the Old Guard of the Military Affairs Committees, 
wanted long enlistments, no reserves, no planning, and a wel- 
ter of small and expensive posts; above all, they wanted not 
to be disturbed. As he looked back in 1947, amazed that there 
should have been issues so bitter on points so obvious, and yet 
remembering the power and skill of the opposition he and 
Wood had faced, Stimson was at a loss to decide whether he 
had accomplished wonders or done far, far less than he should. 
Probably the right answer was a little of both. 

Whatever else it was, his service with the Army was great 
fun. The Regular Army officer, except in his most reactionary 
form, was a man whom Stimson quickly understood and with 
whom he felt a natural sympathy. The code of the officer and 
gentleman was his own code, and he fully shared the enthu- 
siasm of most officers for the out-of-doors. During this first 
term as Secretary of War he made scores of friends in the 
Army, and he kept meeting them at later stages of his life. 
Some were the colleagues of his reforms at this time ; others 
were men who gave him comradeship and guidance in World 
War I. Still others, like Leonard Wood and Frank R. McCoy, 
were friends and co-workers not only in 1911 but in many 
later events. And two of his young aides of the time were men 
whose later careers he watched with great affection and ad- 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 41 

miration. Between them Lieutenants George S. Patton and 
John C. H. Lee carried a total of seven stars in World War 
II. 

The Secretary of War in 1911 was also in effect the Secre- 
tary of the Insular Possessions and to a large degree the Sec- 
retary of Public Works. Stimson thus found himself responsi- 
ble for the continued construction of the Panama Canal, the 
administration of the Philippines and Porto Rico, and for 
important decisions on harbor development, river engineering, 
and the use of water power. His responsibility for the pos- 
sessions need not here detain us; given such administrators as 
George W. Goethals in Panama and Cameron Forbes in the 
Philippines, Stimson found it necessary only to be sure that 
the War Department gave them its full support. In observing 
their work, and particularly in two visits to the Caribbean 
and the Canal, he formed lasting opinions about the nature of 
the American commitment in the areas acquired after the 
Spanish war; he became a believer, not in manifest destiny, 
but in American responsibility for the welfare of these new 
possessions, and fifteen years later he responded quickly 
to a chance to play his part first in Central America and then 
in the Philippines. But between 1911 and 1913 these areas 
were placid, and they posed no major problems. 7 

In the field of public works the situation was different. 
Here there was posed a neat problem of constitutional law 
and governmental authority which plainly demonstrated Stim- 
son's basic attitude toward the powers of the National Govern- 
ment. The problem was in the control and regulation of water 
power in navigable streams, for which Stimson assumed 
responsibility when he became Secretary of War. 

7 In one issue affecting the Panama Canal, Stimson took a stand which he later 
regretted. Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain, the United States 
agreed to charge equal tolls on ships of all nations using the Canal. In spite of this 
agreement, Stimson joined with President Taft and others who argued that it would 
be legitimate to remit the tolls on American coastwise vessels. The argument was that 
the right of subsidy was unquestioned, and that remission of tolls was merely a form 
of subsidy. In later years Stimson found this rather legalistic argument quite insuf- 
ficient to outweigh the evident fact that remission of tolls seemed a breach of faith to 
the British and to such Americans as Elihu Root, and he was glad that Woodrow 
Wilson reversed the position which he had shared as Secretary of War. 



42 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The specific issue posed in 1912 was between those who 
denied any federal power to exact compensation for leases of 
water-power sites on navigable streams and those, like Stim- 
son, who asserted that the federal power extended to this point 
and well beyond, under the commerce clause of the Constitu- 
tion. On one side of the issue were those who genuinely disap- 
proved the notion of federal regulation, and they were joined 
by the usual corporations whose pocketbook might feel the 
pinch of any federal supervision. These forces commanded a 
majority of Congress in opposition to any new assertion of 
national authority. On the other side were the conservationists 
men whose central argument was that water power, as a 
basic national asset, should not be freely turned over to exploi- 
tation by private interests. The issue was first brought to Stim- 
son's attention by friends like Gifford Pinchot well before he 
became Secretary of War, but it was only after he had been 
some months in Washington that he began to give the matter 
close study. This study produced an interesting result. 

Abstractly, the position of his conservationist friends was 
the position Stimson liked. He believed that the national inter- 
est in national resources should be asserted. But concretely, 
he was dealing with a question of constitutional law, and, more 
important still, with a President who tended to be a strict 
constructionist. Mr. Taft himself was a believer in conserva- 
tion, but he was also a careful lawyer with the lawyer's respect 
for procedure and authority. It thus became necessary for 
Stimson to prove to the President that the constitutional power 
over commerce did in fact extend to include charging fees 
for dam-site leases. In order to accomplish this purpose Stim- 
son collected a large body of information proving that in most 
cases dams were important not only as they might obstruct 
navigation, but as they might assist it ; this point was of critical 
importance because it gave the Federal Government an interest 
not only in controlling dam construction but in promoting it, 
and thus the construction of dams became a legitimate Govern- 
ment function. But if it was proper for the Government to 
build dams, it was clearly proper for the Government to make 
any contract it chose with private dam-builders, and therefore 
it was entirely constitutional for the Government to exact 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 43 

payment for its leases of water-power sites. This rather tech- 
nical and complex argument was effective with President 
Taft, and in his veto of the so-called Coosa River Bill (a veto 
written by Stimson) he asserted very plainly the doctrine of 
federal authority over water power in navigable streams. A 
year later, in a notable opinion, the Supreme Court upheld 
the same doctrine, and on even broader grounds. 8 

T^he principle thus asserted marked the beginning of an 
interest in water power and public utilities which Stimson 
maintained for thirty years. After leaving office in 1913, he 
continued his work with Pinchot and others for the advance- 
ment of the idea of federal control and regulation. At the same 
time he remained a strong believer in the private operation of 
public utilities, and after World War I, as lawyer and 
investor, he had an active part in the building of one of the 
most successful of all the great private utility companies. Thus 
in the 1930*8 when another Roosevelt undertook the great 
experiment of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Stimson 
approached the problem with mixed feelings. On the one 
hand, as a private investor and a believer in private enterprise, 
he was opposed to Government operation and even questioned 
the constitutionality of TVA. On the other hand, as a conserva- 
tionist and a believer in the federal power to build dams and 
control water power, he was unable to feel that TVA was all 
wrong, and to one of the lawyers opposing the TVA as uncon- 
stitutional he remarked that 'if you are going to defeat this 
great public undertaking you must find some better argument 
than the foresight of James Madison.' His basic opposition to 
TVA was grounded in the belief that Government enterprise, 
could not be kept free of the spoils system and political 
patronage, but by 1947 it seemed clear that this belief in this 
case had been unfounded. He remained persuaded that the 
competition in power rates offered by the TVA, which paid 
no dividends, no interest charges, and no federal taxes, was 
unfair, but this was essentially a problem of bookkeeping. In 
any case TVA was here to stay, and he had learned in 1912 that 
the principle of planned and co-ordinated river development 
was a sound one. By 1947 he was prepared to admit perhaps 

8 United States vs. Chandler-Dunbar Water Power Co. et. al. t 229 U.S. 53- 



44 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

even to claim what he had denied in 1935, that the principle 
of TVA, as an adventure in the effective use of national re- 
sources, was a direct outgrowth of the position he and other 
conservationists had taken back in 1912. 

President Taft, as T.R.'s Secretary of War, had been the 
roving member of the Cabinet, a sort of political factotum 
whom the President used for many jobs outside his Depart- 
ment. This experience guided him in his own Cabinet practice, 
and during Stimson's two years in Washington he was often 
assigned to jobs which fell outside his departmental domain. 
His first service after his appointment even before he was 
sworn in was the delivery of a speech on the President's 
favorite reciprocity agreement with Canada. This was a con- 
genial labor, for it was one of the few chances Stimson ever had 
as a Republican spokesman to uphold the principle of tariff 
reduction. And indeed most of his work of this kind during his 
first ten months was work he liked he was interested in many 
national issues, and in the greatest of all, the fight for unity in 
the Republican party, his interest was personal and intense. 

Mr. Taft used his Cabinet more freely and fully as a group 
of general counselors than did any of the later presidents with 
whom Stimson served, possibly excepting Mr. Truman. His 
Cabinet meetings were repeatedly the scene of vigorous dis- 
cussion of major decisions of policy, and in these meetings 
Stimson found himself more often than not in a minority. He 
and Walter Fisher represented a sort of liberal wing of the 
Cabinet, and, although the President always listened with 
good will and was himself not basically averse to their ideas, 
he generally avoided decisive support of their position. 

A typical issue of 1911, and one which assumed a peculiar 
and bitter significance because of its connection with Theodore 
Roosevelt, was the question of Government policy toward the 
trusts. This was a subject to which Stimson had given con- 
siderable thought during his work as a Government prosecutor. 
He emerged with a dual conviction first, that effective 
federal regulation of large corporations in interstate com- 
merce was absolutely essential, and second, that what Joseph 
H. Choate called "government by indictment" was a most 
unsatisfactory method of arriving at this goal. Time after time 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 45 

businessmen of high character and evident good will had come 
into the United States Attorney's office in New York to plead 
for a clarification of Government policy; they wished to obey 
the law, but the very general language of the Sherman anti- 
trust law made it almost impossible for them to know what was 
and was not permissible. And Stimson as a district attorney 
was quite unable to give them any assurance of protection. 
His own policy was to refrain from antitrust prosecutions un- 
less he had clear evidence of flagrantly unfair practices and 
purposes, but he could not fix Government policy on com- 
binations in restraint of trade, nor could he bind his successors 
or his colleagues in other districts. It also became clear to him 
that the blunt weapon of prosecution was wholly inadequate 
to protect the public interest it included no provision for a 
constant flow of accurate information upon which Govern- 
ment policy could be based. Both the public interest and the 
selfish interest of honorable businessmen required a more care- 
ful statement of the law governing competition and a more 
flexible instrument for federal supervision of business practice. 

This position Stimson first urged on the President in early 
November, 1911, asking him to read a proposed speech on the 
subject. Mr. Taft "at first said, 'All right, go ahead; it will 
be all right whatever you say.' " 9 Stimson, however, insisted 
that the President read his speech with care, and when the 
President had done so, he asked Stimson not to deliver the 
speech, at least for the time being. 

Once again, Mr. Taft was torn between two counsels on 
the one hand were men like Stimson, arguing as Theodore 
Roosevelt argued ; on the other side were such men as Attor- 
ney General Wickersham, strong believers in the Sherman 
Act and in the sufficiency of a policy of energetic prosecution 
under that law. The President in the end adopted both posi- 
tions, and in his message to Congress in December, 1911, he 
combined a defense of the Sherman Act with recommenda- 
tions along the lines Stimson had advocated, "but these propo- 
sitions came in the last two pages of the message and were 
subordinated to about eight or ten pages in defense of the 
Sherman law . . . and as Root afterwards expressed it to me 

9 Reminiscences, 1911-1912 



46 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

no one really knows what the President's position on the trust 
question is." 10 

The President's compromise decision of December had the 
incidental effect of freeing Stimson to make his long-planned 
speech. This speech deserves brief quotation because it dem- 
onstrates a position which Stimson firmly believed to be the 
proper Republican doctrine of the time: 

"We need not deceive ourselves with the idle dream that 
our virile American democracy will permit the prices of the 
things it buys to be controlled by a monopoly which is beyond 
the reach of the hand of its Government. 

"If therefore we are unwilling to accept state regulation of 
prices, we must accept the only other regulation which is pos- 
sible that of competition, actual or potential. . . . The public 
will have no reason to fear oppressive prices provided the 
field is kept free for new -competing capital to come in when- 
ever the prices in that field are sufficient to tempt it. The ave- 
nues by which the new capital can come in must be kept open. 
The rules of the game must be such as to prevent a new and 
smaller competitor from being driven out of the field by an 
older and a larger one. The old rules of fair play in trade 
under the common law are no longer adequate. The entry of 
large business into the game has made necessary some changes 
in rules which were sufficient so long as the size of competitors 
was approximately equal. . . . 

"The various forms of so-called cutthroat competition ; boy- 
cotting competitors by compelling customers not to trade with 
them; so-called factors' agreements; interfering with the con- 
tracts of competitors by threats or fraud ; setting up fictitious 
independents; favoritism in giving credit; and general dis- 
criminations among customers all of these methods by which 
can be recognized the illegal purpose of crushing out a com- 
petitor and controlling the market heretofore shared with 
him should be carefully defined and punished. 

"This is the first great piece of constructive work that our 
situation seems to me to require. . . . 

"But I believe there is a second and even more important 
step to be taken. Thus far the function of the Government 

10 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 47 

which we have discussed has been purely negative; it has 
merely said 'Thou shalt not.' I believe that the time has come 
for the exercise of its affirmative powers. . . . 

"The criminal provisions of the law should be supple- 
mented by legislation which will establish an administrative 
bureau for the permanent, continuous, and watchful oversight 
of corporate business engaged in interstate commerce legis- 
lation which will give stability to such legitimate business and 
at the same time safeguard the just interests of the public. 
Such a bureau would become an assistance and safeguard to 
the honest businessman and yet at the same time make the law 
vastly more effective against the other kind. It could collect 
a large amount of information which would be of inestimable 
service in informing the business community as to what the 
law meant; at the same time, it could furnish Congress similar 
information for the purpose of perfecting future legislation, 
and would bring to the side of the public the tremendous 
power of publicity. . . . 

"It is folly to accuse such a system of being too inquisitorial. 
That objection generally comes from the men who desire no 
regulation whatever." 11 

The speech concluded with a statement which represented, 
in 1911 and in 1947, Stimson's basic view of the problem of 
government and business: 

"We are engaged in learning; and while we are inflexible in 
our resolution that the interest of the public must dominate 
the situation, we realize more fully than before that the in- 
terest of the public is inextricably bound up in the welfare of 
our business. The best minds can see only a comparatively 
short distance into the future and but inadequately under- 
stand the great forces of modern society now at work. What 
we should attempt is to direct these forces toward a just indus- 
trial system, leaving full play to individual initiative and 
full scope for individual reward, but at all hazards to secure 
social and industrial freedom to the great mass of the people." 

This address of December, 1911, is important as a part of 
Stimson's life and a basic statement of his carefully deliber- 
ated opinions. It has interest too in the striking resemblance 

11 Address to the Republican Club of New York City, December 15, 1911. 



48 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

between Stimson's program and that followed by Woodrow 
Wilson later in the passage of the Clayton Act and the crea- 
tion of the Federal Trade Commission. But, as Stimson's own 
reminiscences remarked in 1913, the speech was of little or no 
value when delivered. Not only was Mr. Taft preoccupied 
with the defense of his own antitrust prosecutions, but he and 
Attorney General Wickersham between them had permitted 
a suit to be brought whose bill of particulars contained re- 
marks about Theodore Roosevelt which ended forever any 
chance of a Taft- Roosevelt reconciliation. In an antitrust ac- 
tion against the United States Steel Corporation, the Govern- 
ment claimed that President Roosevelt, in 1907, had been 
deceived into a wrong approval of the purchase by United 
States Steel of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. T.R. 
was infuriated; and whatever the rights and wrongs of the 
situation, it was certainly a most extraordinary charge for the 
lawyers of any administration to level without warning at an 
ex-President of their own party. The case was secretly pre- 
pared, and Stimson like most other members of the Cabinet 
remained in complete ignorance of its explosive nature until 
the fat was in the fire. The steel suit dragged through the 
courts for nine years, only to be lost in the end by the Govern- 
ment, but the unhappy reference to T.R., in which Mr. Taft 
himself apparently had no personal part, was a direct fore- 
runner of the final tragic split of the Republican party. 

3. THE SPLIT OF 1912 

To many of the members of Mr. Taft's Cabinet the final 
break with Theodore Roosevelt, in February, 1912, was 
merely the fulfillment of the long expected. To some it was 
even a desirable ending to an anomalous situation ; so long had 
they feared and mistrusted Colonel Roosevelt that they were 
delighted to have him in open opposition where they could 
freely attack him. Even Mr. Taft himself, once as warm as 
any man in his personal friendship with T.R., felt that in the 
new position of open hostility there was a genuine mission for 
him ; he could join his own inevitable defeat with the defeat 
of Rooseveltism. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 49 

To Stimson it was entirely different. He had joined the Taft 
Cabinet on Theodore Roosevelt's express advice; throughout 
the first ten months of his service he was in constant and 
friendly correspondence with the Colonel and had been gen- 
erously helped by both private counsel and public support in 
the columns of the Outlook. When others talked of an inevi- 
table break and announced their certainty that the Colonel 
would be a candidate against Mr. Taft in 1912, Stimson de- 
nied it and denied it again. He knew that T.R. was under 
heavy pressure from the insurgents, but he could not and 
would not believe that his friend and personal leader would 
give in to this pressure and come out in open opposition to 
the man he had himself made President. 

On January 7, 1912, together with Secretary of the Navy 
Meyer, Stimson went to Oyster Bay. He and Meyer were in 
roughly the same position both were devoted personal 
friends of Mr. Roosevelt; both were bound by official loyalty 
and genuine respect to President Taft. Deeply disturbed by 
increasing rumors that the Colonel would be a candidate, they 
decided to go to see him. They were received with great 
warmth and remained for three hours, discussing the matter 
thoroughly. Meyer emphasized the evident fact that only the 
Democrats could gain from a Taft-Roosevelt split. Stimson 
placed his appeal on more personal grounds: he feared that 
the ordinary man, and the historian too, would think it per- 
sonally unfair for Mr. Roosevelt to run against his old friend 
Taft it would seem like turning against his friend in the 
time of heaviest need. Mr. Roosevelt "started a little when I 
said this," but "he did not say anything in resentment and 
seemed to understand the spirit in which I said it." As Stim- 
son recalled it in early 1913, "The underlying basis of the 
whole conversation was that under no circumstances would he 
be a candidate for the Presidency," although he would of 
course not promise to refuse a genuine draft. 12 Stimson and 
Meyer came away much encouraged and convinced that the 
Colonel would not betray his own interests and Mr. Taffs 
by an open break. 

During the remainder of January, in frequent conversations 

12 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



5 o ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

with such friends as Senator Root, Stimson found his confi- 
dence in this view gradually fading away. A letter from the 
Colonel on January 19 gave him serious concern it seemed 
to breathe a new spirit of battle ; it was not like the man who 
had remarked on January 7 that "the Presidency could never 
appeal to him again as it had in the past . . . and that he no 
longer itched to get his hands on the levers of the great ma- 
chine again." 13 By early February, Stimson was greatly 
worried and he had reason to be, for the evidence now avail- 
able indicates that Mr. Roosevelt's mind was made up before 
the end of January. On February 7 Stimson sent a long letter 
arguing that there was nothing to gain and everything to lose 
in an open break, both for Colonel Roosevelt personally and 
for the Republican party. "To that letter I never had any 
direct reply," but a friendly note on other subjects arrived in 
the last days of February. By then, however, Theodore Roose- 
velt was a declared candidate for the Republican nomination. 

Stimson was terribly disappointed, but the worst was yet to 
come. He knew that the coming fight would be bitter; he 
knew that he himself would be a Taf t man ; he had no choice, 
in common decency, and in any case he believed that Theo- 
dore Roosevelt was making a campaign on false issues he 
saw no such ground as the Colonel claimed for opposing Mr. 
Taft. But for all that, his friendship for Mr. Roosevelt was 
one of his most deeply prized possessions. How could he hew 
to the line of friendship while maintaining his outspoken sup- 
port of Mr. Taft? 

He tried. He was already scheduled to make a speech on 
March 5 in Chicago. When the news of Mr. Roosevelt's deci- 
sion came, he inserted in his Chicago speech two brief para- 
graphs stating his position between Taft and Roosevelt : 

"I am for Mr. Taft because I believe that he has faithfully 
carried out this progressive faith of the Republican party; 
that his administration stands for orderly, permanent progress 
in our National Government ; and that to refuse him the nom- 
ination on the assertions that have been made against him 
would be a blow to that progress and would put a premium 
upon hasty and unfounded criticism. 

18 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 51 

"I entered into public life under the inspiration of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. I am a firm believer in the great national pol- 
icies for which he has fought. And I now remain his sincere 
friend. But I believe that those who are forcing him, contrary 
to his original intention, into the arena against Mr. Taft, are 
jeopardizing instead of helping the real cause of progress in 
the nation. The introduction of such a contest at this time, 
dragging in, as it necessarily will, new and personal issues 
which are quite foreign to the great progressive policies for 
which the Republican party stands, cannot fail to weaken 
whichever candidate is eventually nominated in June." 

This statement, carefully designed to avoid angering Mr. 
Roosevelt, was forwarded by Stimson to him before the speech 
was delivered ; with the advance copy went a letter full of the 
personal unhappiness Stimson felt: "The past week or so has 
not been a happy one for me. There is no use pretending that 
I was not surprised or that I don't feel that you have made a 
mistake; for I do. . . . You have been right so many times that 
perhaps you are right now. All the same I have thought all 
along that Mr. Taft should be renominated, and I think so 
still ; and I am going to say so, publicly, in the speech that I 
am going to make in Chicago. ... I am a poor hand at keeping 
quiet and balancing on a fence. But I feel very much as if the 
horizon of my little world was swimming a good deal and it 
is hard to look forward to a time when I am not working or 
thinking with you. . . ." 

The answer that Stimson received showed the Colonel at 
his best: "Dear Harry: Heavens' sake! You have most often 
been right; I hope I am right now. I needn't tell you my dear 
fellow that I don't care a rap about your attitude in favor of 
Mr. Taft. I have always told you that you would have to be 
for him. I shan't look at the speech much though I should like 
to, simply because I haven't time. The newspapers waste their 
time if they try to tell me that you have said anything against 
me " 

That is where the story should end, but it does not. When 
Stimson made his speech Colonel Roosevelt did read it; the 
paragraphs quoted above did make him angry, and he said 
publicly things about Stimson that deeply hurt a devoted 



52 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

friend things that Stimson heard Roosevelt afterward re- 
gretted saying and that need not, therefore, be repeated here. 
As a result a friendship which had grown warmer and warmer 
for six years was shattered, and for three years the two men 
did not meet. 

Time after time in those three years Stimson went back 
over the events described above; he had angered the Colonel 
by saying he was "forced" into the contest he might better 
have said "urged" but in all conscience there was no insult 
in what he said, and he could only believe that T.R.'s anger 
was in some part a recognition of the truth of his remarks. 
Long as he had hesitated, and much as he had resisted the 
continuous urgings of his progressive friends, after taking the 
plunge Mr. Roosevelt had no wish to be reminded that part of 
him had always opposed the decision. He was a fighter, and in 
the fight of 1912 he bitterly and quite unfairly attacked many 
older and closer friends than Stimson. Stimson himself was 
always most unhappy at what Mr. Roosevelt said of Elihu 
Root a man who owed him much, certainly, but to whom 
he owed much more. Only in this one outburst did T.R. ever 
attack Stimson; compared with what he said of Mr. Root, this 
was magnanimous treatment, and Stimson knew it. Political at- 
tacks were normal, and expected, in such a situation, even 
between friends, but those hot and angry personal denuncia- 
tions by a master of invective were quite different. Colonel 
Roosevelt made his oldest friends into liars, ingrates, knaves, 
and thieves, always no doubt sincerely but with a wrathy fe- 
rocity that made it quite impossible to smile as if he were a 
mere Peck's Bad Boy. And, hardest of all for Stimson, these 
outpourings came from a man whose personal kindliness and 
compelling charm he had a hundred times experienced, and 
whose magnificent spirit he knew to be basically undefiled. 
In his personal denunciation of his friends Theodore Roose- 
velt was brutally unfair and to no one more than to himself. 
Fortunately for Stimson his relationship with Theodore 
Roosevelt did not end in 1912. Three years later a new com- 
mon cause brought them together, and when the Colonel died, 
in 1919, Stimson lost a friend as close as the one he had lost in 
1912. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 53 

The campaign of 1912 need not detain us here. The Roose- 
velt hat went into the ring in February; from then on matters 
went from bad to worse. Mr. Taft won the nomination at a 
convention at which Elihu Root was chairman ; Mr. Roosevelt 
cried "Theft" and formed the Progressive party. The Repub- 
lican party was split right down the middle, and Woodrow 
Wilson was easily elected. Both Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt 
were far more bitter at each other than at the Democrat Wil- 
son ; each found consolation in the defeat of the other. It was 
an extraordinary campaign in many ways, perhaps most of all 
for its demonstration of the personal magnetism of Theodore 
Roosevelt; he became the principal target of both his oppo- 
nents but with a brand-new party ran second, well ahead of 
President Taft. 

For Stimson it was a wretched campaign. He was treated 
with perfect sympathy and fairness by the President, and in- 
deed he never admired Mr. Taft more than for his sensitive 
recognition that Mr. Roosevelt's personal friends, even when 
repudiated, could not join in any direct attack on their former 
leader. Stimson tried in the spring to write a speech which 
would help the President without hurting Mr. Roosevelt. He 
produced an effort which was of high moral tone but no pos- 
sible political value. Stimson and Senator Root talked it over. 
"He liked it very much and fully agreed with what I said, 
but he agreed with me that it would do no good in the cam- 
paign. He said, 'It would not have any more effect than to 
read the 23rd Psalm.' " 14 Mr. Taft accepted the situation with 
perfect understanding, and called on Stimson only for formal 
speeches defending the administration and its policies. 

For Stimson himself the campaign of 1912 had an odd re- 
sult. Until that campaign he had been known as a progressive 
Republican, and in his own view he remained a progressive 
even after the split. Yet for the rest of his life he was often 
tagged as a stand-patter because he remained with President 
Taft. This he thought as unfair to him as it was to Mr. Taft 
himself. It was not principle but personality, not purpose but 
method, that divided Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt. Once the 
campaign had begun, both sides made issues where none had 

14 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



54 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

been before, and it was true that most of the real reactionaries 
were with Mr. Taft and almost all the "lunatic fringe" of 
radicals with T.R. But between the two great men themselves 
and to Stimson both were great there was no such basic 
division. 

Perhaps if Stimson had been a private citizen he would 
have followed Mr. Roosevelt into the new party. His first per- 
sonal loyalty would certainly have been to the Colonel. But 
as it was he had no choice, and no doubts. "One of the main 
reasons why I had been taken in was on account of my close 
association with Roosevelt and with a view to conciliating his 
following. . . . All such hopes had, of course, turned to ashes 
in the present situation. I had never had any doubts whatever 
as to the proper course to pursue. In the first place I had not 
gone in myself with any political commission, but had gone 
in to make as good a Secretary of War as I could. 

"I had gone in with that express commission from Roose- 
velt. When he now turned against the President I could no 
more resign than I could openly come out against the Presi- 
dent. Either one would have been rank disloyalty to the com- 
mission which I had accepted from Mr. Taft and which had 
been approved in 1911 by Roosevelt. 

"Under the circumstances as I confronted them then in the 
winter and spring of 1912, it would have been just as serious 
a blow to Mr. Taft to have a member of his Cabinet resign 
under those circumstances as it would to have me support 
Roosevelt while in the Cabinet." 15 

The election of 1912 brought an end to a most unhappy 
period in Stimson's life. The tension lifted, especially at the 
White House, where Mr. Taft proved himself a good loser, 
almost happy to be relieved of an office he had never really 
liked. Stimson finished his term with a burst of renewed ac- 
tivity on the Army reforms he had learned to value so highly. 
Through letters to friends of his who knew the President- 
elect, he was able to communicate some of his ideas to Mr. 
Wilson and he was succeeded by Lindley Garrison, a man 
with whom he soon established very friendly relations ; Gar- 
rison quickly grasped the basic principles for which the Army 

15 Reminiscences, 1911-1912. 



WITH ROOSEVELT AND TAFT 55 

progressives were working, and the War Department was un- 
disturbed by the change of administration. On March 4 Stim- 
son returned to private life, with no personal regrets whatever. 

Service with Mr. Taft had sometimes been difficult, for 
this President was not a political leader but a judge. Nor had 
Stimson always agreed with his chief on policy. But in basic 
honesty and personal courage, Mr. Taft was the equal of any 
man Stimson ever worked for, and in addition he was kindly, 
candid, and easy to work with. It was his misfortune that he 
was not born to like the polemics of political leadership; his 
instinctive lifelong yearning for the duties of the bench was 
a better guide than the family ambition which led him to the 
White House. To Stimson he was and remained for many 
years afterward a loyal and devoted older friend. 

Nor should we end this chapter without recalling that the 
main business of Stimson's two years, after all, was the Army. 
For what he learned in those two years, and what he was able 
to do as his contribution to military reform, he always re- 
mained grateful to the man who appointed him. For his later 
service in the largest assignment he was ever given, these two 
years were the most important in his early public life. 



C H A P T E R III 

Responsible Government 



I. FRAMING A PROGRAM 

THE awakening of conscience and complaint that marked 
American politics from 1890 to 1917 crossed Stimson's 
life at three points. As a citizen of New York City he had met 
it as an issue simply of honest and efficient administration 
municipal corruption could be beaten by electing a strong and 
honest mayor. As district attorney charged with the execution 
of federal laws he had become a sufficient symbol of righteous- 
ness to win political attention. The problem was again pre- 
sented mainly as one of civic virtue of finding and convicting 
the wicked. From 1911 to 1915 he was deeply involved in the 
study of American Government as a whole, and here he faced 
at close range problems that would not yield to the simple 
criteria of right and wrong which seemed sufficient for a judg- 
ment of Tammany Hall or Charles W. Morse. For if the body 
politic was diseased, the cure was not obvious and many solu- 
tions were being offered. 

The theoretically easy and emotionally satisfactory solution 
to the failures of democracy lay in "more democracy." If gov- 
ernment was inefficient or subservient to powerful private 
interests, turn it back to the people. This solution, which was 
in direct line with the traditions of Jeffersonian democracy, 
found its expression in the movement for the direct election of 
senators and the direct primary and more exuberantly in the 
campaigns for the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. 
The initiative was to provide a method of popular legislation 
by direct individual proposal and public vote ; the referendum 
would permit the people to pass directly on laws suggested 

56 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 57 

either by individuals or by the legislature; the recall would 
provide a means for the removal of elective officers by a simple 
popular vote. The people had lost control of their Government 
because its complexities provided a smoke screen for the 
manipulations of bosses and private interests; then let the 
people themselves take charge. 

The popular force of these arguments was very strong; the 
direct primary became a cause to which all parties gave lip 
service, and the direct election of senators became law as the 
Seventeenth Amendment in May, 1913. The other measures 
in the general program of direct government made less head- 
way, but the attitude that inspired them remained. 

Other students were in the meantime working out a wholly 
different set of conclusions. Admittedly government espe- 
cially state government was susceptible of corruption and 
prone to inefficiency; the ascendancy of the boss and the 
ordinarily inviolate security of powerful business interests had 
made good government an uphill fight. But to many it seemed 
clear that the remedy could not lie in such simple nostrums as 
those of direct government. After all, the state officers and 
legislators were all directly elected somewhere among them 
lay the power, and as individuals they were directly respon- 
sible to the voters. It was not the simple principle of democracy 
that was here at fault ; the worst of these men often gloried in 
their heavy and unbroken majorities. The answer must lie 
somewhere else. If they were essentially ineffective and yet 
continued in office by re-election, it must be that their inef- 
fectiveness had not been made evident to the voter. And to those 
who reached this conclusion an explanation at once suggested 
itself as they looked at the existing governments. The difficulty 
faced by the public was that it was seldom easy to find out 
what official was responsible for any given success or failure. 
American Government in the early twentieth century was 
characterized by divided authority and general impotence; 
finding the sinner in politics was like finding the little round 
ball in the old shell game. The finger of blame was pointed by 
one officeholder at another, right around the circle, as Nast had 
drawn it a generation before in his famous cartoon of the 



5 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Tweed Ring. 1 Nowhere could the voter stop his search and 
surely know who was his man his public servants were col- 
lectively responsible, of course, but as individuals? He could 
not say. 

The ordinary result of this condition was ordinary corrup- 
tion, and from the Civil War onward American local politics 
had been largely a matter of alternating long-term boss control 
and short-term reformist rebellion. But toward the end of the 
century the problem was seen to be more serious. The bosses 
were friends of "the interests"; while "the interests" were 
themselves more or less invisible, this connection was not in 
itself widely disturbing. But the imperial achievements and 
excesses of American capitalists were not so easily camouflaged 
as the quiet negotiations of insignificant politicians. In the 
years of Theodore Roosevelt the battle for public regulation 
was fought and apparently won in the ballot boxes. It seemed 
to be the public verdict that government must assume the duty 
of energetic action in the regulation of commerce, industry, 
and labor. It was this assignment of new duties which brought 
into the open the basic inefficiency of the state and federal 
governments. 

Responsibility could not be divorced from authority. And 
as they further studied the history of state government, men 
began to think that irresponsibility was a direct result of scat- 
tered authority and divided power ; fear of too much govern- 
ment had led to untrustworthy government. The true remedy 
for American misgovernment would lie, then, in exactly the 
opposite direction from that indicated by the advocates of 
direct democracy. The elected officials must have more power, 
not less only so could they be held accountable for success or 
failure. 

It was in this stream of thinking that Stimson had found 
himself in January, 191 1, when at Theodore Roosevelt's request 
he made a speech to the Republicans of Cleveland, Ohio. In 
preparing that speech he was for the first time forced to organ- 
ize his own mind. He had been asked to talk on the progressive 

1 And as Hamilton had foretold when he argued against a divided or plural execu- 
tive branch in the seventieth article of the Federalist. This article became a text which 
Stimson often quoted in these years. 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 59 

movement in the party. And he did so, confining his attention 
to state government. After paying his respects to the general 
good will of all progressives of all schools, he addressed his 
attention to the sources of the evils they were attacking: 

"I think it is clear that the underlying cause of this move- 
ment is the present inefficiency of our state governments. . . . 
As has been pointed out by Mr. Croly in his brilliant study 
of this subject, 2 the prevailing form of our present state gov- 
ernment took shape during the first half of the last century 
when the political views of Jefferson and Jackson were current. 
. . . Fear of such tyranny as some of the Royal Governors 
exercised over their colonies before the Revolution was allowed 
to color and influence a situation which was entirely different. 
They cut the Executive down to a term too short to carry 
through any constructive policy; they took away his chiefs of 
departments, and made them either elective or otherwise inde- 
pendent of him ; they separated him as far as possible from the 
representative lawmaking body with which he must work; and 
in every way they reduced him to a mere ornament of doubtful 
beauty." 

Then he stopped and made a comparison which he was later 
to use with its cutting edge : "Which one of you businessmen 
would assume the presidency of a great enterprise under pledge 
to conduct it to a successful conclusion, if you were limited 
to one or two years for the task ; if you could not choose your - 
own chiefs of departments, or even your legal adviser; were 
not allowed full control over your other subordinates ; and if 
you were not permitted freely to advise with and consult your 
executive committee or your board of directors?" 

Having appealed to the common sense of his largely Repub- 
lican audience, he returned to his main theme: "So long as 
our nation remained young and hopeful, so long as our 
problems were simple, we could scrape along even with happy- 
go-lucky inefficiency. And we have done so. For a long time 
the only result of our faulty organization . . . was to develop 
a professional political class which ran our government for us. 
The boss and his power is the direct outgrowth of depriving the 
public officer of his power. 

2 Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life, Macmillan, 1909. 



60 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

"But this condition of national simplicity remains no longer. 
The giant growth of our industries, the absorption of our free 
land, the gradual change of our nation from a farming people 
to one living largely in cities, with needs far more diversified 
than those of their fathers, have brought us face to face with 
the most acute problems of modern democracy. Side by side 
with our helpless officialdom has grown up the tremendous 
structure of modern incorporated business. There is nothing 
inefficient in that development. Its wealth is limitless and 
increasing, its organization has the perfection of a military 
machine, its ministers spring to their tasks endowed with the 
best specialized training that science can give them. The result 
of contact between the two could have but one issue. So long 
as they occupy any ground that is common, so long as business 
has any relations to the public, one or the other must control. 
And it is not difficult to see, under present conditions, which 
that one must be." 

Business had grown big, but this in itself was no sin. The 
crime was simply in the failure of government to keep pace 
"one or the other must control," and control should rightly 
belong only to government. 

"One result of this growth of the power and wealth of 
business has been a complete change in the attitude of the 
private citizen towards the Executive. Instead of regarding 
it as a possible tyrant, as Jefferson did, we now look to executive 
action to protect the individual citizen against the oppression 
of this unofficial power of business. When Mr. Jefferson wrote 
to Archibald Stewart: 'I would rather be exposed to the incon- 
veniences attending too much liberty than those attending too 
small a degree of it,' he never dreamed that out of too much 
liberty from official control might develop an unofficial power 
capable not only of overwhelming the individual citizen but 
the state government along with him. He never dreamed that 
the time w;ould come when the net earnings of a single private 
business association would far exceed the total revenues of the 
great states of New York and Ohio put together. In other 
words, the danger feared by Jefferson is now reversed. It is 
not the people who are in danger from a strong state govern- 
ment. It is the government itself that is in danger from private 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 61 

influence. And the danger is that it will not be strong enough 
or pure enough to protect the single citizen from the same 
influence. 

"It is to this situation that the progressive movement in the 
various states addresses itself. This is the main evil to which, 
in one form or another, the various remedies are being ap- 
plied " 

This attack on Thomas Jefferson was a congenial labor for 
Stimson. As he wrote to a friend at the time, "Poor old Jeffer- 
son . . . what I have charged up mainly to his account was 
his fear of any strong Executive, about which he was so fond 
of talking, and his opposition to any strong government. . - . I 
have never thought Mr. Jefferson guilty of originating much 
of any political ideas. His power and his accomplishment was 
that he popularized ideas originated by others, most of which 
he very imperfectly understood." 

Anyhow Jefferson was certainly no help in the problems 
which the speaker took up next: "The people in their per- 
plexity are trusting more and more to the Executive ; they are 
trusting less and less to the legislature. They recognize that 
the Executive has become the representative of the whole state 
in a sense not hitherto appreciated. They appeal to him for 
relief from the obstacles which block the free course of repre- 
sentative government." 

Governors of strong character, he went on, had been able to 
push through or slide around the obstacles of the system, but 
always at great cost of time and energy, and he might have 
added that states could hardly expect as their normal right 
such men as the three he mentioned Charles Hughes, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. The conclusions he 
reached were simple: "We should frankly abandon the theory 
of the separation of the executive and the legislative functions, 
and our state constitutions should be changed to accomplish 
that end. To sum up my analysis, I believe that the causes of 
our trouble are, in the main, threefold : first, our state Execu- 
tives are not strong enough or responsive enough to deal with 
modern conditions; second, our local legislatures, largely 
owing to the same change in modern conditions, have tended 
to become less representative of public opinion and more rep- 



62 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

resentative of private interest; and third, the theory of separat- 
ing the Governor from the legislature is a tremendous block 
to efficiency. These very defects naturally suggest their reme- 
dies; and I believe that the true line of progress is to aim to 
perfect and strengthen our representative system of govern- 
ment, through the Executive, rather than to weaken it or 
abandon it for any other." 

Thus back in 1911 Stimson had laid down the main line 
of his thinking. The speech was praised by his friends T.R. 
was particularly cordial. "I think your speech not only admir- 
able, but one of as wise originality as we have recently seen." 
The "originality" was largely in detail of organization and 
Colonel Roosevelt would have been pained to know how much 
Stimson's general line of attack paralleled that of Woodrow 
Wilson in New Jersey. The fact of the matter was that 
Stimson was expressing views which were widely held by 
writers like Wilson, Herbert Croly, and Henry Jones Ford 
and certainly shared by many a state Governor. For us the 
important fact is that, from the preparation of this speech 
forward, they became Stimson's views, strongly held and 
zealously advocated. 

The ideas of 1911 were reinforced, not weakened, by his 
experience in the War Department, and he returned to New 
York with an increased conviction that his basic theories were 
sound. In a speech delivered in Philadelphia in May, 1913, he 
extended to the Federal Government his insistence upon a 
strong Executive, and although he was now cut off from active 
participation in national politics, the next two years provided 
in New York State an unusual opportunity for constitutional 
thinking. 

The Republican party in New York, as elsewhere, was split 
down the middle by the campaign of 1912. To Stimson the 
principal objective of the moment was to end the split, recreat- 
ing the progressive Republican party as it had been in the 
second term of Theodore Roosevelt. To him the Republican 
party still remained the proper vehicle for progressive policies ; 
he saw it as the descendant of the Federalist party and the 
historic party of positive government. "Throughout its exist- 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 63 

ence," he wrote to an Ohio Republican, "it has contained 
within its membership the men who believed that the Govern- 
ment was not a mere organized police force, a sort of necessary 
evil, but rather an affirmative agency of national progress and 
social betterment." 3 This, as Stimson well knew, was only a 
partial statement of the nature of the Republican party; it had 
also been in some places and at certain times the party of the 
stand-patters. The present problem, indeed, was to prevent 
these stand-patters from taking control. Two things were re- 
quired to remake the party after 1912; one was the reassertion 
of Republican-Federalist principles in a positive, progressive 
program, and the other was the elimination of those leaders 
of the far right who in their opposition to all effective govern- 
ment were at once betraying the true party tradition and lend- 
ing substance to the complaints of the progressives. 

At first in the spring of 1913 it appeared that the principal 
duty of the Republican party in New York was to clean out 
its machine leaders and reactionaries, and for several months 
Stimson and a group of his friends devoted their energies to 
an abortive effort to unseat the Republican boss, William 
Barnes, Jr. A Harvard graduate and leading citizen of Albany, 
Barnes had become, in his effective control of the extremely 
conservative wing of the party, a symbol of reaction. To Stim- 
son, such leadership seemed intolerable. 

But it was a fruitless undertaking. Barnes was lawfully 
established as state chairman; he would not resign and, lack- 
ing an outstanding leader willing to give his full energy to the 
business of politics, the liberal Republicans were unable to 
effect their projected "grass roots" rebellion. 

When they were forced to leave Barnes in his glory, the 
attention of the reformers turned from men to ideas and for 
their ideas they steadily made friends, hammering a detailed 
and practical program out of the general notions which they 
and others had brought to the subject of government. Their 
pressure forced Barnes to give them a hearing in the party. In 
convention in September, 1913, they made some progress; at a 
mass meeting under Root in December they made more. And 
then in the spring of 1914, by one of the curious ironies of 

3 Letter to George W. Wess, December 16, 1913. 



64 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

politics, Tammany Hall presented the reform Republicans 
with a great opportunity, for on April 7 in a vote that was 
evidence of the efficiency of the Democratic machine and the 
apathy of the rest of the state, there was approved a Demo- 
cratic proposal for a constitutional convention to be held in 
the summer of 1915. With this convention as a definite objec- 
tive, the reform Republicans, of whom Stimson was perhaps 
the most active, framed a program with which in that summer 
they took control of the party. In terms of New York State 
this program spelled out the general principles of responsible 
government which had increasingly enlisted Stimson's con- 
victions: The Governor should be strong; his executive power 
should not be hampered by the existence of other elective 
officials; he should formulate and propose the financial pro- 
gram of the state and be free to bring his measures personally 
before the legislature. 

This program with other measures of less personal interest 
to Stimson became, though not in binding form, the platform 
upon which Republican candidates campaigned for election 
as delegates to the convention, in the election of November, 
1914. And to the consternation of Tammany Hall two-thirds of 
those elected in November were Republicans. 

The Progressive or Bull Moose party failed to elect a single 
delegate. The leadership of the convention would be entirely 
in the hands of the Grand Old Party; it would now be seen 
whether in fact the Republicans of New York were a party of 
progress and reform. Many of his progressive friends were 
pessimistic, but Stimson was full of hope. It was true that many 
of the Republican delegates were extremely conservative and 
that very few of them as yet fully understood the principles for 
which Stimson and others were working; but in the platform 
of 1914 and the general attitude of the more interested members 
of the party, Stimson and his friends thought they saw the 
beginnings of a movement which might produce substantial 
fruits in the convention. 

Stimson himself was elected as a delegate at large, running 
third highest of fifteen successful candidates. It was his first 
and only elective office and its importance in his life runs far 
beyond its meaning to the voter or the general historian, for in 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 65 

the convention of 1915 the work and thinking of several years 
came to a focus. 



2. IN CONVENTION ASSEMBLED 

The convention which met in Albany on April 6, 1915, 
contained an extraordinary group of men, old and young. 

Easily chief among them was Elihu Root. Having behind 
him the commanding prestige of a singularly distinguished 
career, with his brilliance and industry unweakened by his 
seventy years, he guided the convention throughout its labors. 
His close attention was given to every amendment passed, and 
the force of his personal leadership was the great agent of 
successful compromise and adjustment wherever the issues 
were complex and major elements divided. Root occupied a 
position of unique distinction among Republicans. Twenty 
years before he had been floor leader of an earlier constitu- 
tional convention. Throughout the state men now leaders in 
their own right looked to him for guidance. It was only his 
earnest advocacy of the cause of responsible government that 
made possible the construction work of the convention; his 
voice was persuasive to many who might otherwise have re- 
garded with suspicion and fear the demand for stronger and 
more active government. Root's interest in the convention 
had been largely developed by Stimson, and if the latter 
had done nothing else for the idea of responsible government, 
he would have been content to stand on his work in winning 
Root to its support. 

Root was not only president of the convention but the leader 
of the much smaller but still controlling group of men who 
came to be known by their adversaries as "the federal crowd." 
These were the Republicans who wanted reform; the four 
most energetic were Wickersham, Parsons, O'Brian, and Stim- 
son. 

George W. Wickersham, floor leader of the Republicans 
and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had been President 
Taft's Attorney General. He was a man of force perhaps 
of more force than political experience. In his mistrust of 
Colonel Roosevelt he seemed a stern conservative, but his anti- 



66 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

trust prosecutions under Mr. Taft had been extremely ener- 
getic. He was as firm in his convictions as he was friendly 
and gregarious in social doings, and to the "federal crowd" 
he brought industry, intelligence, and the prestige of a dis- 
tinguished career. 

Herbert Parsons was in Stimson's view, then and after, the 
ablest younger Republican of New York State. He had been 
one of Theodore Roosevelt's principal political advisers for 
the state during Roosevelt's Presidency. He had been six 
years in Congress. He combined a talent for party work with 
the finest personal integrity. More than most of his colleagues 
in the party, he had a keen sense of the validity of the new 
drives for social legislation, and his influence was thrown 
steadily in the direction of humanitarian government. Parsons 
was most active in the management of the convention and 
became the chairman of the Committee on Industrial Interests 
and Relations in a later day it would have been called the 
Labor Committee. 

John Lord O'Brian was a forty-year-old progressive Repub- 
lican from Erie County. He had first become prominent as 
an ardent and effective supporter of Governor Hughes. A man 
of modesty, with a sensitive intelligence and a lively wit, he 
was the leading representative of the younger and more 
progressive up-State Republicans. 

These men, with Stimson, were Mr. Root's principal lieu- 
tenants, but there were others in the convention who were 
usually friendly to the reform program such men as Seth 
Low, ex-president of Columbia and former reform Mayor of 
New York, and Frederick C. Tanner, the new and youthful 
chairman of the Republican State Committee. 

These men with a few others formed the nucleus which gave 
to the Convention a program of revision. It was their task in 
committee and on the floor to win support for as many of 
their reforms as possible. This task was greatly complicated 
by the fact that not all the able leadership was in the camp 
of the "federal crowd." On the one hand were the Democrats 
and on the other the conservative up-State Republicans, and 
there were striking personalities in each group. 

The idea of a constitutional convention had been of Demo- 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 67 

cratic origin, but the fifty-two Democrats who came to Albany 
were no longer very eager for change, for it was clear that 
change could no longer be of their making. The great party 
issue was the reapportionment of the legislature to remove 
certain restrictions on the representation of New York City 
in the state Senate, and on this issue defeat was certain. No one 
in the Republican party would vote for a change which might 
eventually have the effect of increasing Democratic strength 
at Albany; and even the less partisan Republicans Stimson 
and his friends among them held that it was meet and right 
that no one city should dominate the councils of the state. To 
the Democrats all this was pious fraud, made more bitter by 
the fact that in their view this was the central wrong, to right 
which they had for two years been urging a convention. Their 
elder statesmen, Delancey Nicoll and Morgan J. O'Brien, 
spoke with cool and prayerful logic ; their younger leaders, Al 
Smith and Robert Wagner, used facts and figures, eloquence 
and emotional appeal, to urge "justice" for the citizens of their 
city. It was useless. Nor would Stimson, then or later, admit 
that they were right. In New York State, from the seaboard 
to the Great Lakes, there was a great variety of people and in- 
dustries; he did not think they should be subjected to the en- 
tire control of the urban masses who lived in a single 
metropolitan corner, however numerous the latter might be. 
In any event the Republicans would not stand for change. In 
a final vote almost purely on party lines they continued the 
restrictions on New York City which had been written into 
the constitution, in 1894. 

To their credit the Democratic leaders after this rebuff con- 
tinued to take an active and largely constructive part in the 
convention. Alfred E. Smith was especially conspicuous. He 
was only forty-one, but for twelve years he had been in the 
legislature, and he had served as speaker in the Democratic 
Assembly of 1913. His detailed and sensitive understanding of 
the affairs of the state was of frequent effect in adjusting gen- 
eral principles of reform to the specific .peculiarities of New 
York, and, in spite of his frankly cordial connection with 
Tammany, he was in general sympathy with most of the pro- 
gram for responsible government. Stimson, like the rest of 



68 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the convention, from President Root downward, was much 
drawn to this knowing, friendly, and constructive critic; he 
formed for Al Smith a warm respect which later grew to 
affection. 

However it might affect the sensibilities of the Democrats, 
the issue of reapportionment was essentially not central to 
the work of the convention, and the most important opposi- 
tion faced by Root and his friends came not from the Demo- 
crats but from a group of men, mainly up-State Republicans, 
to whom the whole program of responsible government was 
offensive. Of this group the leaders were two William Barnes 
of Albany and Edgar Brackett of Saratoga. 

Barnes in 1915 was no longer Republican state chairman, 
having wisely yielded that office in order not to face a fight 
over his re-election. He remained, however, the undisturbed 
satrap of Albany, and, though for unity he had sacrificed 
much, there was in him more of principle and less of unadul- 
terated bossism than many critics saw and all that was prin- 
ciple rebelled at the new ideas. He was currently engaged in 
his celebrated libel suit against Colonel Roosevelt, in which 
the latter successfully defended, as truth, his assertion that 
Barnes and Boss Murphy of Tammany were covert allies 
against popular rights. To the convention Barnes brought the 
weight of his up- State following and the convictions of a 
stern conservative. 

His assault on the program of the reformers took a form 
which has become familiar through the years. He offered an 
amendment, short and simple : "The legislature shall not grant 
any privilege or immunity to any class of individuals not 
granted equally to all the members of the State." It is an injus- 
tice to summarize his objective bluntly, but so unjustly sum- 
marized, his purpose was to prevent all forms of "social legis- 
lation" minimum wage laws, workmen's compensation laws, 
old-age pensions, and the like. All this he would do in the 
name of equality, and he described the road to serfdom with 
energy and conviction : "The principle of equality must suffo- 
cate in the atmosphere of legislation for privilege. The sea of 
experiment on which we are asked to embark offers no pos- 
sibility of return. It is not within the power of the human mind 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 69 

having secured largesse something for nothing not to de- 
velop further demands for acquisition without performance. 
. . . The certain destination involved in this kind of legisla- 
tion will not be the attainment of the socialistic ideal but the 
tyrannous autocratic state. . . ." 

Neither the socialistic ideal nor the tyrannous autocratic 
state was of great concern to Stimson and his friends as they 
opposed the Barnes amendment on the floor. Their attention 
was centered on more immediate problems, and with the ener- 
getic assistance of the younger Democrats they attacked Barnes 
from all directions. His proposal would reduce government to 
impotence ; it would remove from the state all power of con- 
trol over matters of labor, health, and social reform; it would 
hamstring government in emergency; it might in the end 
so undermine the prestige of the state as to expose it to rebel- 
lion. 

The vehemence of the denunciation was an index of the 
amendment's importance. It was, for all its innocent appear- 
ance, in direct opposition to the central postulate of respon- 
sible government, namely, that the inevitable movement of the 
times had made more and better government a vital necessity. 
As Stimson had said four years before: "For the very purpose 
of preserving the old standards of the citizen's rights to his life, 
his liberty and his pursuit of happiness, it is essential that the 
arm of the state should be more effective than ever before; 
. . . and that it should penetrate far more constantly into the 
citizen's affairs." 4 

All this Barnes denied. The cleavage was clear. One group 
would entrust wide powers to government as a matter of neces- 
sity and right, and on the same grounds the other group would 
deny such powers. No man could hold to both philosophies, 
and the vote on the Barnes amendment was perhaps the most 
significant in the convention. It was beaten more than two to 
one, but among those who stood firm for laissez-faire "equality" 
were forty Republicans and only five Democrats. The "federal 
crowd" were in a badly divided party, and the division was 
one of principle. 

Second only to Barnes as a leader of the opposition among 

4 Speech at Cooper Union, May 3, 1911. 



70 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Republicans was Bracket* of Saratoga a statesman of the old 
school, as he was the first to admit. He was capable of impas- 
sioned but generally good-humored eloquence on every sub- 
ject from the health-giving waters of Saratoga Springs to the 
iniquities of Tammany Hall, but he reserved his finest wit 
and his sternest oratory for two subjects : the sins of the "f ederal 
crowd" and the splendor of the legislative branch. He was 
openly opposed to giving, any member of the executive branch 
"any power worthy of the name," and he therefore strongly 
opposed the "short-ballot" proposal of the reformers, under 
which only the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor would 
be elective officers, other executive officials being appointed by 
the Governor himself and responsible directly to him. 

In the debate on the short ballot Brackett was apostrophized 
by the Democrat Delancey Nicoll with the sort of kindly ridi- 
cule which Brackett himself often employed : "Although this 
amendment goes such a very little way, it has excited the most 
intense antagonism on the part of ... the delegate from 
Saratoga, whose oration of great force and length on Saturday 
morning denounced us all, Democrats and Republicans alike, 
as being engaged in a conspiracy to steal away the liberties 
of the people and establish an autocratic and oligarchic form 
of government. He said . . . that we were pulling the whole 
temple down and striking a blow at the very foundation of 
our Republican system. Ah, I must say to my dear old Cin- 
cinnatus from Saratoga, the old order of things gives place to 
the new. ... If this convention shall pass this amendment I 
want to say this to my old and venerable friend from Saratoga: 
Content yourself with the motto of Cato to his son : When vice 
prevails and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a 
private station. 5 Retire, sir, retire, sir ... lie down to pleasant 
dreams, dreaming of a heaven where they have elections 
every day, where even the doorkeeper in the House of the Lord 
is elected, where no man is ever appointed to office, where all 
ballots are long and all terms are short, where only the spirits 
of the Old Guard that never surrender are admitted and 
where the souls of the ungodly federal crowd are stopped at 
the gate." 

Senator Brackett, with his remarks about the "natural 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 71 

ferocity" of an ex-Secretary of War and the autocratic pre- 
dilections of such politicians by appointment as Root, Wicker- 
sham, and Stimson, represented more than himself alone. There 
were many like him, up-State legislators who saw no good in 
these new-fangled notions from New York City and Wash- 
ington. Few of them were in the convention, but their weight 
outside was greater than it seemed ; they were leading citizens 
in their counties, and skillful in the matter of votes. 

Nevertheless the reform Republicans controlled the con- 
vention. They were the chairmen of the major committees. 
They were the most zealous in attendance, the most interested, 
and the most effective. The house at No. 4 Elk Street where 
Stimson, Parsons, O'Brian, and several others lived was a 
center of constant activity, and from it there emanated an 
atmosphere of energetic optimism. It became known as "the 
ice house," for to other delegates there was something a trifle 
forbidding about. the righteousness and zeal of the "federal 
crowd" ; and Stimson himself was somewhat amused and not 
surprised to find that once more his opponents were calling 
him "frosty." In his own recollection later, there seemed a 
warmth and sense of comradeship about "the ice house" which 
was rare in his political experience. The men who lived there 
had ideas, and they believed they had a chance to apply them 
practically to the fundamental law of the greatest state in the 
Union. 

The work of the summer took two major forms study and 
discussion in committee, and debate on the floor of the conven- 
tion. It was not till August that the committee chairmen began 
to bring in their reports. The short ballot might be a familiar 
notion to its earnest advocates, from President Wilson down, 
but in a committee of practicing politicians no merely evan- 
gelical appeal would do. So each of the major measures was 
worked out in long sessions, and gradually the weight of in- 
formed opinion was brought as far as possible to support the 
Root program. 

To Stimson all this was highly educational. Legislative 
labor of this sort was largely a new experience, and in con- 
tending for his program he developed a new respect and liking 
for the complex arts of the active member of a lawmaking 



72 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

body; much that he learned in 1915 was of lasting value, and 
if it was true, as Senator Brackett maintained, that his inclina- 
tions were naturally executive and despotic, he nevertheless 
learned thoroughly how much of human kindness and per- 
suasion there must always be in carrying an effective majority 
of any parliamentary assembly. 

From committee the successive amendments emerged to the 
floor and then in long and serious debate each one was fully 
argued. Stimson was frequently on his feet. He was perhaps 
not eloquent but he had a firm grasp of the facts and a capacity 
for organizing them. His major effort was for the executive 
budget indeed, he often found himself regarded almost as 
a man of one idea, so zealous was he in its advocacy. 

The particular importance of the executive budget had 
come home to Stimson during his years in the War Depart- 
ment, where he had been forced to study at firsthand the con- 
sequences of haphazard financial methods. He there dis- 
covered that routine War Department appropriations were 
in the hands of seven different committees and subcommit- 
tees of Congress and that the authority of the Secretary of 
War in controlling expenditures in his own Department was 
negligible. Mr. Taft indeed undertook in 1912 to present for 
the executive branch a general budget. The opposition major- 
ity in Congress ignored it, and it was not merely a matter of 
partisan disagreement. To the legislative mind it seemed alto- 
gether wrong that financial proposals should originate in the 
executive branch; it seemed a wicked interference with the 
legislators' prerogative of appropriation. 

To Stimson, an executive mind, it seemed that this legis- 
lative attitude was based on a misunderstanding. He agreed 
that control of the purse strings was a legislative prerogative, 
but he felt that the essence of this prerogative was in the 
power to control and limit expenditures, not in the power to 
initiate and promote them. He believed that expenditures 
should be proposed by the men Responsible for administration; 
the only likely source of a general and not a local outlook was 
in the Executive, who was responsible to all the people. And 
the only way in which the people could hope to unravel the 
mysteries of governmental spending was through the existence 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 73 

of a single concentrated financial plan. The proper function 
of the legislature was to hold down the aggregate of expendi- 
tures, and this was the very function least fulfilled when the 
members of the legislature themselves initiated those expen- 
ditures. In the logrolling which inevitably developed among 
its members when the legislature originated all financial pro- 
posals, it was left to the Executive, Governor or President, to 
control by veto the financial excesses of the lawmaking body. 
This was a direct reversal of the proper relationship. In a 
system of government which was manifestly unfitted for the 
increasing duties of the new century, nothing was more 
obviously outdated than the Government's disorganized 
financial methods. 

All this and much more Stimson said in his speeches to the 
convention, and when his amendment was adopted with only 
four dissenting votes, it was his personal triumph. Under the 
proposed new article the Governor of New York was to 
prepare and submit each year a budget covering all the 
expenses desired for the executive branch. His proposal was 
to have priority over any other financial legislation, and its 
items could be reduced but not increased by the legislature. 
The question of financial responsibility would thus be clearly 
assigned to the Governor when he got what he asked for ; to 
the legislature for what it denied him. The major financial 
problems of the state would appear in a single measure, to be 
considered as a whole ; if the people were ever to have a clear 
appreciation of the economics of their government, this was 
the way they might get it. 

Long after the constitutional convention of 1915 Stimson 
retained his special interest in the idea of the executive budget. 
He followed with care its growing popularity in other states 
and in the National Government; he assisted in its belated 
adoption in New York, and he felt some pride in the belief 
that of all the reforms considered at Albany in 1915 none 
made more rapid progress to acceptance throughout the 
country, and none was more generally successful in operation. 

In Stimson's 1915 amendment there was one provision which 
deserves particular attention. Although not generally adopted 
by those states which later turned to the executive budget, it 



74 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was always to Stimson one of the most important aspects of 
his proposed reform. He proposed that the Governor and other 
officers of the executive branch should appear before the 
legislature, in person, to explain and defend their requests for 
funds. This was an effort on his part to strike a blow at the 
heart of the system of divided government which existed in 
most American state constitutions and in the Federal Consti- 
tution as well. This attack on the separation of the legislative 
and executive branches was violently opposed by traditionalists 
and especially by friends of the legislative branch. Yet Stimson 
always believed that such a procedure would in fact increase 
the power and dignity of the legislature. He saw it as a means 
of providing frequent and accurate reports to the lawmakers, 
without the hullabaloo which too often attached to formal 
investigations, and he saw it too as a method of insuring careful 
work by executive officials. He knew, as he told the convention, 
that his own War Department estimates would have been 
made with much greater care if he had been under an obliga- 
tion to defend them personally before Congress. 

3. SUCCESS, FAILURE, AND VICTORY 

While Stimson worked on his budget amendment, other 
parts of the reform program were being framed into amend- 
ments by other leaders. In the end thirty-three changes in the 
constitution were accepted by the convention for submission 
to the voters in a referendum. The central reforms in these 
amendments, as Stimson saw it, were the executive budget, 
the shorter ballot, and the reorganization of the executive 
branch to bring its various departments unmistakably under 
the Governor's control. Each of these changes was a major step 
toward increased executive authority, and thus toward respon- 
sible government Second in importance were the "home rule" 
amendments, designed to free cities and counties from some 
of the restraints of control by the state legislature ; these amend- 
ments were designed to have the dual effect of giving to local 
governments proper authority in their own affairs, while re- 
moving from the legislature many of the local problems which 
distracted its attention from state-wide issues. A somewhat 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 75 

distinct but similar achievement was the reform of the state 
judiciary, to minimize the "scandal of the law's delays." There 
were many other changes of detail. To Stimson, when the 
convention adjourned in September, it seemed that a great 
constructive work had been done. He believed that the amend- 
ments, taken together, would move New York a long step 
forward on the road to a simplified, efficient, responsible state 
government, and he looked forward hopefully to victory for 
the new constitution at the polls in November. If the reforms 
in many particulars did not go as far as he would have liked, 
they went a great deal farther than he had believed probable 
a year before. 

And for this result the main credit belonged to one man, 
Elihu Root. It was the signal accomplishment of Root that 
by his selfless and self-evident devotion to the improvement 
of the New York Constitution he set the tone for debates and 
votes in which thoughts of party were subdued, give-and-take 
became the rule of action, and neither the best nor the in- 
different became the enemy of the good. The sense of high 
seriousness which animated the convention, and the long 
thoughts about state government to which its members were 
aroused, worked through those members far beyond the sum- 
mer of 1915. Probably the outstanding value of the con- 
stitutional convention was its effect upon the younger men 
who worked there as Stimson put it, 'it was a great school 
of government.' 

The best teaching is said to be that which has close contact 
with reality; and in the reality of dealing with such unruly 
scholars as William Barnes and Edgar Brackett, Root and 
his followers were forced to adjust their purposes to the avail- 
able votes. They produced the best constitution the convention 
would approve, but their thumping majorities were sometimes 
proof not of sentiment for reform but of concessions to the 
unenlightened. Thus the short ballot was turned by hard 
necessity into a less long ballot. The attorney general and the 
comptroller remained elective, the former as a concession to 
the lurking popular distrust of any Governor unhampered 
by an independent legal counselor, the latter simply because 
the current incumbent was a man with many friends. Stimson, 



76 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

as the agent of the compromise, was left to endure the good- 
humored jibes of the Democrats and the scandalized com- 
plaints of the thoroughgoing reformers. The jibes were natural, 
but the complaints seemed to him less justified, and throughout 
the convention and the campaign for its adoption he was 
considerably annoyed by the noises of disgust from reformers 
in the outside world which greeted every adjustment of the 
ideal to the possible. Some of these reformers were his friends, 
men from whom he had learned much of what he believed, 
and their failure to make due allowance for the necessities 
of the situation was disappointing. 

This gap between the man of unburdened principle and 
the man responsible for action was one which Stimson observed 
many times before and after 1915, and usually his sympathy 
remained with the practical man. Each case, of course, was 
subject to a separate judgment. He himself often felt that 
the bolder policy was the better politics, but his first inclina- 
tion was always to defer to the judgment of the man on the spot. 

Fortunately most of his reforming friends, men like Herbert 
Croly of the New Republic, in the end supported the revised 
constitution and energetically joined in the battle for its adop- 
tion. It was support from conscience, not from feeling, but 
even such backing was very welcome. For when they returned 
from Albany, the sponsors of responsible government learned 
that in persuading the convention they had done little to 
persuade the voters. 

The central difficulty was that Stimson and his friends 
lacked a mandate. The convention had assembled under laws 
passed by very different people from those who in the end 
controlled it, and its positive reforms were not the result of 
the kind of prolonged public pressure which is generally 
requked for constitutional change. Nor was there time, in the 
eight weeks between the end of the convention and the state 
referendum, for the kind of educational campaign which was 
the only alternative method of obtaining popular support. 
Such education requires not weeks but years, during which 
the gradual development of public interest enlists the support 
of those practical men who wish to ride the tide. In 1915 there 
was no solid public feeling behind the reformers and a clear 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 77 

field was left for the enemies of any part of the revised con- 
stitution to attack it with impunity. 

Thus opposition which had been covert at Albany became 
open and noisy in the campaign. Tammany Hall denounced 
the new constitution from top to bottom. Samuel Gompers 
and his American Federation of Labor found in it thirteen 
fatal flaws. Stimson inclined to believe that for Mr. Gompers 
the really fatal flaw was in his failure of election as a delegate ; 
however earned, his opposition was violent. Tanner was able 
to hold the official organizations of the Republican party in 
line, but individual leaders, especially up-State, did not hide 
their opposition, as Stimson found when he went campaigning. 
Where the leaders were friendly, he found large and friendly 
audiences, but when he arrived at Saratoga to speak at a 
mass meeting in support of the constitution, he was urbanely 
introduced by his incorrigible friend Brackett to a hall con- 
taining about seven citizens. 

The professional politicians were joined in their opposition 
by many other groups, each with reasons of its own especially 
violent opposition came from city employees nervous about 
the effects of the "home rule" amendments. Much other 
opposition was on the wholly illogical ground that the con- 
vention had omitted some desirable amendment it was like 
rejecting a new shirt because you also wanted a new hat 

The mobilization of opposition was made much easier by a 
tactical error of the reformers. In their anxiety to emphasize 
the interlocking unity of their amendments, they had bunched 
all but a few of the changes in a single proposal, to which the 
voters must say "yes" or "no" as a whole. With no driving 
affirmative sentiment for the reform program, voters who 
disliked any single item were tempted to vote "no" on the 
whole program. 

Two other factors worked against Stimson and his friends. 
Faced with the problem of securing popular support for a 
general program based on unfamiliar concepts of government, 
they needed a great teacher a man who knew how to catch 
the imagination of the general public and enlist its backing 
for a cause. Stimson and others earnestly made speeches and 
wrote letters, but they lacked the ability to set fire to public 



78 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

feeling, and the one man who might have done it for them 
kept a stony silence down in Oyster Bay. Thus there was no 
knight in armor. Still more unfortunately, a work which 
could only succeed if strong public interest should be aroused 
was undertaken in a year when war had seized the center of 
the stage. The summer of 1915 was one of increasing tension, 
as America watched the great battle in Europe, and President 
Wilson carried on his intricate maneuvers with the Germans. 
The Lusitania had been sunk in May, and after that the war, 
and its possible effect on America, far outshadowed the prob- 
lems of state government which had been pushed forward 
by a small group of men in the face of public apathy. 

So on November 2 the proposed new constitution was de- 
feated by a vote of more than two to one. In retrospect it 
seemed as if there might be more need for explanation of its 
400,000 friends than its 900,000 enemies, so great were the 
forces arrayed against it, but to Stimson at the time the vote 
was a great disappointment. Still, as the weeks passed and the 
personal hurt faded, he began to believe that, in the end, the 
work at Albany would not be wasted, and so it proved. 

Thirty years later a look at the Constitution of New York 
showed the following: a shortened ballot, a reorganized 
administration, a stronger Governor, a greater measure of 
home rule for counties and cities, less purely local legislation, 
and most particularly an executive budget. The similarity 
with the stillborn product of 1915 was astonishing. 

In much of this later movement Stimson played his part, 
from the side lines. But the principal agent was Governor Al 
Smith, who with persistence, good humor, and great skill 
guided his version of the program, piece by piece, into the 
fundamental law. So largely has the government of New York 
thus changed that for a generation now successful administra- 
tion has been the rule and not the exception in Albany, and 
so well have the voters liked their governors that not since 
1920 has a candidate for re-election been defeated. It might 
be stretching the facts to say that boss rule has wholly dis- 
appeared, but it would certainly be fair to say that now the 
Governor has become himself the boss, and as he must face 
the voters at the polls, authority and responsibility are clearly 
joined. 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 79 

4. CREDO OF A PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE 

The constitutional convention of 1915 was Stimson's last 
major labor in the field of domestic American affairs, and 
in concluding this chapter it seems proper to give a general 
summary of his lifelong opinions on American government. 

His basic convictions were two first that the primary and 
overriding requirement of all government was that it should 
not infringe the essential liberties of the individual, and 
second, that within this limitation government could and must 
be made a powerful instrument of positive action. The primary 
and essential liberties of the individual, freedom of speech 
and of person, were on the whole properly protected by bills 
of rights in the federal and state constitutions. To Stimson 
as a lawyer with experience both as a student of the common 
law and as a public prosecutor, this essential restraint imposed 
by law on all government was a fundamental principle of any 
decent society. 

But to construe this respect for personal freedom into an 
assertion that all government was evil seemed to him absurd. 
The power of government must always be superior to the 
power of private citizens, and in the industrial civilization of 
the twentieth century it was the duty of government to provide 
for the general welfare wherever no private agency could 
do the job. In a choice, the smallest competent unit of govern- 
ment was always preferable; Stimson preferred the township 
to the state and the state to the national government. But often 
there was no choice; national problems must be solved by 
national authority. 

It was the need for more and better action that led Stimson 
to his program of responsible government. This was essentially 
an attempt to combine democracy with leadership. The 
democrats of the nineteenth century had feared government 
as the tool of despotism and had deliberately made it weak. 
Stimson and his friends feared weak government as an open 
invitation to private despotism, and they sought to restore its 
strength. Stimson himself never feared governmental dictator- 
ship in the United States ; he believed that the temper of the 
nation forbade it; with a certainty far greater than any con- 



8o ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

fidence in the written words of the Constitution, he believed 
that the United States was and would remain a free country. 
On the one occasion in his life when a President seemed to be 
trying to throw aside the restraints of constitutional govern- 
ment, the attempt of Franklin Roosevelt to remake the Su- 
preme Court in his own image, the response of the people 
confirmed Stimson's confidence. And even in this case there 
was no immediate question of dictatorship, as he saw it 

The essential safeguard against the abuse of power was the 
sentiment of the people. Against invasions of basic freedom 
that sentiment could be enforced and protected through the 
courts and in Congress; against bad administration or un- 
desirable policies, it could be enforced at the polls. To go 
farther, as the doctrine of separate powers had done, and make 
the government weak because all government seemed dan- 
gerous, was in Stimson's view a plain abdication of responsibil- 
ity and an open confession that democracy and effective 
government could not be combined. 

So he turned in the other direction and framed into a 
concrete program his personal belief in the value of leader- 
ship. He would make the Executive strong and leave him free 
to carry out his program. Given such freedom, the Executive 
could be held fully responsible for his record, and he could 
be judged at the polls. The voters would know whom to 
praise or blame. 

Nor did this doctrine imply any contempt for the legislative 
branch. What Stimson desired was a system in which the 
Executive and the legislature would be in close and constant 
contact. He hated the nineteenth-century predominance of the 
legislature over the Executive, because he believed that it led 
to weak and ineffective government, but this opposition to 
what Woodrow Wilson called "Congressional Government" 
could not fairly be construed as opposition to Congress itself. 
The Congress to Stimson was a vital instrument of responsible 
government; its basic function, however, was to legislate and 
to control appropriations, not to administer. Administration, 
the exercise of power in action, belonged to the executive 
branch, and it was this exercise of power which Stimson 
desired to set free. The President in the nation, and the 



RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 81 

Governor in the state, must be the finally responsible political 
leaders. The constitutional provisions which made it possible 
for a President to be rendered powerless by legislative opposi- 
tion he considered clearly wrong. This sort of stalemate, which 
occurred twice while he was in Republican Cabinets and 
twice more when he was in private life watching Democratic 
Cabinets suffer, had no useful purpose whatever; it was a 
wholly different thing from the legitimate and indeed indis- 
pensable labor of an active minority in the legislature. 

Thus Stimson believed in strong government. But even this 
belief was qualified. That the President should have great 
powers did not mean that these great powers should always 
be in use. Stimson was emphatically not one of those who 
believed that the best thing to do with all social and economic 
problems was to dump them on the federal Executive. If he 
was a progressive, he was also, he thought, a conservative. He 
believed in private enterprise and in decentralized authority. 
He particularly admired the tradition of local self-government. 
He believed in the rights and responsibilities of rich men as 
well as poor men. He saw no reason to approve the notion of 
a nationally planned economy economic regulation was in- 
evitable and desirable; economic dictatorship was not. He 
believed himself a democrat, in that he placed his basic reliance 
on the political wisdom of the entire American people, but he 
never posed as an egalitarian. He was not disposed to assume 
that labor was always right as against capital, or that the basic 
issue was always between the House of Have and the House 
of Want. 

He believed that the Government was the government of 
the whole nation, and that there was always a policy which 
was best for all the people, and not good merely for one group 
as against another. That he or any other man would always 
find the right policy was too much to ask of mere human 
beings, but the test of purpose remained. The best political 
leadership, as he understood it, was that which appealed not 
to class against class or to interest against interest, but above 
class and beyond interest to the good of the whole community 
of free individuals. It was to set the stage for this sort of 
leadership that he worked for responsible government. 



CHAPTER IV 

The World Changes 



I. WAR COMES TO AMERICA 



^ I AHERE seems to be little doubt now that August, 1914, 
_L marks the end of an era in human affairs. When the great 
powers of Europe began their general war, the world turned 
a corner. 

From this generalization the United States is not exempt, 
and it happens that Stimson's life shows forth clearly the na- 
ture of the change wrought by the first war. In the years before 
1914 and by a carry-over for one year thereafter, his pre- 
dominant interest was in domestic affairs. From the death of 
the constitution of 1915 until his retirement in September, 
1945, his public activity was almost entirely devoted to issues 
arising from the fact that the United States is not alone in the 
world. 

It is not easy for those who have grown up since 1914 to 
understand how little Americans of that time expected any 
part of what happened in the following years, or how radi- 
cally the texture of American attitudes was changed by these 
events. Of course the war was not the only source of change. 
The vast flow of immigration, the end of the frontier, the 
surging challenges of industrial development, and many other 
elements were involved in the changing pattern of American 
society in the early twentieth century, and there was novelty 
in the air long before 1914. But it was domestic novelty, and 
about it there was an air of innocence that did not survive 
the war. To Stimson, as he looked back in 1947 at the years 
before 1914, it was not the problems but the serenity of life 
that stood out. The age of Theodore Roosevelt, for all of its 



THE WORLD CHANGES 83 

moral battles, had been a time of hope, not fear, and con- 
fidence, not worry ; the strenuous life itself was a life of well- 
equipped big-game hunting, or else of soldiering which even 
at San Juan Hill,- its proudest hour, engaged only the young 
and adventurous few. War as a desperate and horribly de- 
structive test of the whole fabric of civilization was war un- 
thinkable in 1914. 

If younger Americans found it hard in later years to re- 
construct a proper image of life before the first war, many of 
their elders faced the same problem in reverse. "New occasions 
teach new duties," but the lesson is a hard one when the oc- 
casion is unwelcome and the duty harsh and deadly. Inexora- 
bly the First World War brought the United States into in- 
timate connection with the quarrels of Europe, for the first 
time in a century and for the first time ever as an active world 
power. Most of Stimson's later public service was devoted to 
one aspect or another of this great new relationship. 

When the Austrian ultimatum was delivered to the Serbians 
Stimson read the news in an afternoon extra as he came from 
a political discussion of "responsible government" among Re- 
publican leaders. He never forgot his wonder as he read the 
newspaper and realized that, if the Austrians meant what they 
said, their note spelled war. The fearful fact that an Austro- 
Serbian war must also involve Russia, Germany, France, Bel- 
gium, and Great Britain he learned more gradually, during 
the succeeding days. And as the struggle developed, his atti- 
tude toward the American relation to it gradually changed, 
as did that of most of his compatriots. 

But from the very beginning, Stimson's sympathies were 
strongly on the side of the French and the British. He had 
lived in Paris as a boy while his father studied medicine under 
Pasteur and other Frenchmen; Dr. Stimson had begun his 
studies in Berlin and had quickly departed, disgusted by the 
martial swagger of the youthful German Empire. Stimson 
had thus learned from his father to mistrust the Prussians and 
admire the French; to this he had added, from his own ex- 
periences in later travels and in Washington, a lively respect 
for both Great Britain and France. And the German invasion 



84 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of Belgium was so evidently cynical and brutal that it at once 
hardened his sympathies against the Central Powers. 

At the same time, during the first year and more of the war, 
Stimson had no other thought than that the proper duty of 
the United States was to remain neutral. Through the winter 
of 1914-1915, when the war seemed quietly stalemated, Ameri- 
can foreign policy was hardly a major issue, to him or to the 
general public. But even the joint effect of the Lusitania sink- 
ing and the Bryce "atrocities" report, in the spring of 1915, 
did not drive Stimson from his belief in neutrality. In a speech 
delivered at Carnegie Hall on June 14, he shocked many of 
his friends by the violence with which he denounced Ger- 
many, but it was not the basic war purpose of the Germans 
which he attacked ; it was rather the fact that Germany, in her 
method of warmaking, had violated the rights of neutral na- 
tions, first in Belgium and now on the high seas. In later years 
Stimson was to come to the conclusion that the basic wicked- 
ness of Imperial Germany, as of her successor the Nazi Reich, 
lay in her complete acceptance of the use of war as an instru- 
ment of expansionist policy, and he was to have a leading role 
in the assertion and development of the principle that ag- 
gressive war is the basic crime among the nations.. But in 1915 
it was not wafmaking, but Illegal warmaking, that he attacked. 

In taking the position that he did, Stimson was of course 
following the almost unanimous sentiment of the time ; it was 
only as they looked back on World War I that men began to 
learn that in modern industrial civilization war itself has be- 
come the basic crime. Stimson, in June, 1915, aligned himself 
directly behind President Wilson, who, he said, "has stated 
and defined those [neutral] rights of our citizens with clear- 
ness and precision." He quoted with approval the concluding 
passage of Wilson's note of May 13, 1915, on the subject of 
the Lusitania: "The Imperial German Government will not 
expect the Government of the United States to omit any word 
or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of 
maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and 
of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment." It was 
only in his parsing of this sentence that Stimson became more 
explicit than the President, and the following comment had a 



THE WORLD CHANGES 85 

prophetic accuracy: "Now 'any act' may include force. If the 
Government of the United States is not to omit 'any act neces- 
sary to the performance of its sacred duty,' it stands by this 
declaration pledged to the use of force if Germany persists 
in her attacks upon our citizens traveling on the high seas." 1 
This was simple logic; as long as President Wilson's notes 
could restrain the Germans from unrestricted submarine war- 
fare, there was nothing in Mr. Wilson's policy, or in Stimson's, 
that required American participation in the war. But the 
moment the Germans definitely adopted as the official policy 
the method of the Lusitania attack, the United States was 
pledged to fight. 

Nor did Stimson in 1915 consider this a narrow ground on 
which to enter a major war. Much of this speech was 
devoted to a careful description of the vital importance 
of the rights of neutrals. "The progress of our race towards 
civilization has not been along the smooth pathway of logic. 
We have not succeeded in abolishing war in the name of its 
inhumanity and in substituting for it a rule of peace and 
reason. Instead of that, we have struggled along, gradually 
narrowing and restricting the area of war as we have grown 
less and less willing to endure its ravages. This may be illogi- 
cal but man is not always a logical animal. And so we have 
found that his progress, attained in this halting and stumbling 
method, has been more effective and permanent than tons of 
rhetoric and volumes of theory. . . . Now by far the greatest 
advance which has been thus slowly made in putting brakes 
on the savagery of war has been in the development of the 
. rights of the neutral. . . . Gradually for the modern world 
there have been won great areas of neutrality into which the 
clashes of belligerents are not supposed to enter buffers of 
civilization against the shocks of war ever-widening areas 
of peace which are full of promise for the ages of the future." 
Neutral rights must be defended, even at the risk of war. 

This was the state of Stimson's mind in 1915, and his po- 
sition was shared by almost all those who were prepared to 
oppose Germany at all. It is another measure of the colossal 
effect of the First World War that for Stimson and many 

1 Speech at Carnegie Hall, June 14, 1915. 



86 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

others its devastation served to effect a complete reversal of 
this traditional doctrine of neutrality. In later years Stimson 
many times argued with force his deep conviction that in 
modern war there is always one aggressor, and sometimes two, 
and that there can be no neutrality in the face of aggression. 
But in 1915 it was not yet known that the wars of the industrial 
age were terrible and devastating beyond all predecessors, so 
terrible even in their so-called legal forms that it was necessary 
to describe as wholly insufficient the historic effort of "gradu- 
ally narrowing and restricting the area of war" by international 
law and neutral rights. 

Even two years later, in 1917, when unrestricted submarine 
warfare was resumed, Stimson no longer believed that the 
rights of neutrals were the fundamental issue. Certainly the 
submarine attacks were the immediate cause of war, but 
the basic enemy was Prussianism. Unfortunately nothing in 
American theory, practice, or attitudes called for war on Prus- 
sianism as an enemy in itself, and it seems entirely clear that 
if the Germans of World War I had respected American 
rights at sea, the United States would never have entered the 
war. Stimson for one never in any way publicly advocated 
entry into the war until the Germans reversed their U-boat 
policy in January, 1917. 

What he did advocate, early and late, and in vigorous op- 
position to Mr. Wilson, was preparedness. He was fresh from 
his experience as Secretary of War, and intimately aware of 
the fantastic weakness of the American Army ; he knew that 
the Army's mobile force was about 24,0x30 men, and that these 
men had ammunition enough for about a day and a half of 
modern battle. He would have been an advocate of military 
improvements even if there had been no war in Europe. But 
the European struggle, and particularly the fact that the 
United States stood pledged to maintain, by force if necessary, 
her national rights on the seas, made an increased military 
effort absolutely vital. The great professional leader in this 
cause was General Wood ; Stimson became both an ardent sup- 
porter of Wood's efforts and, as an ex-Secretary of War, an 
active preacher of preparedness in his own right. In 1914 and 
1915 he visited Wood's camp at Plattsburg where many civil- 



THE WORLD CHANGES 87 

ian leaders were getting a taste of real military training. In 
1916 he enrolled at Plattsburg himself and succeeded in shoot- 
ing so well that the doctors, waiving both his age and his near- 
blindness in one eye, pronounced him fit for active service. 

In his work for preparedness Stimson did not openly criti- 
cize President Wilson until the middle of 1916. With the 
domestic program of the New Freedom he found himself in 
general sympathy, and he was never eager to criticize any 
President for actions in the field of foreign affairs. Secretary of 
War Garrison was a firm believer in better preparation of the 
Army, and as long as Garrison remained in office Stimson 
made it his business to support the War Department. He 
particularly approved of his successor's effort to build a re- 
serve force a Continental Army which should avoid the 
state politics and other weaknesses characterizing the National 
Guard. Yet Stimson himself went farther. In speeches during 
1915 he regularly made clear his personal belief that the basic 
military strength of the country lay in the obligation of every 
man to defend his country, and he pointed with admiration to 
the system of universal military training in effect in demo- 
cratic and neutral Switzerland. In the beginning of 1916, 
in the speech in which he announced his support of Garrison's 
Continental Army, he also announced his personal belief that 
the correct basic method of insuring the national defense, in 
peace and in war, was "some system of universal liability to 
military training." This belief he never thereafter abandoned, 
and in early 1917, as the war crisis approached, he became an 
ardent advocate of immediate conscription. 

It was in the late spring of 1916 that Stimson first became 
an active public opponent of Mr. Wilson. For this opposition 
there were three causes. First, he was strongly opposed to the 
President in the basic matter of his attitude toward the war; 
though Mr. Wilson had succeeded in putting a temporary 
stop to unrestricted submarine warfare, such phrases as "too 
proud to fight" struck no responsive chord in Stimson's mind, 
and he felt too that even a neutral nation was under obligation 
to take a moral stand on such an act as the violation of Bel- 
gium. Stimson was not neutral in thought, and he saw no 
reason to be. Secondly, Mr. Wilson was a Democrat, and Stim- 



88 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

son was a devotedly loyal Republican. He had given a great 
deal of time over a period of three years to the work of re- 
building the Republican party, and he believed that this party 
was the proper one to take the helm in the storms he saw ahead. 
Finally, and this was the point on which Stimson's personal 
opposition was strongest, the President had shown himself a 
very halfhearted believer in preparedness, so slack that Secre- 
tary Garrison finally resigned in protest against his policies. 
The President had deserted Garrison on the issue of the Conti- 
nental Army and had instead made his peace with the congres- 
sional supporters of the National Guard. It was a plain 
surrender on an issue Stimson considered vital. 

Stimson's own candidate in 1916 was Elihu Root. He be- 
lieved that Mr. Root was by all odds the best qualified in- 
dividual in the country, and he vigorously rejected arguments 
that his candidate might not be a good vote getter. He believed 
that the crisis demanded the best man in the party, and he 
found that even Mr. Root's opponents could not deny his su- 
perb qualifications. But neither the prodigal son T.R. nor most 
western Republicans were willing to accept Mr. Root, and the 
nomination went to Charles E. Hughes. Stimson promptly 
gave his full support to Hughes, and he was both surprised 
and chagrined when Hughes barely missed victory in Novem- 
ber, The Hughes campaign was something of a disappoint- 
ment to Stimson, who felt that a more vigorous and outright 
stand would have been more successful, but nothing in the 
campaign lessened his great admiration for Hughes, and he 
thought it a very great loss to the people of the United States 
that Hughes was not their war President in 1917 and after. 
It was also a great loss to the Republican party, for if Hughes 
had won, there would almost surely have been no Harding era. 
The year 1916 ended with Mr. Wilson's abortive effort to 
secure peace by mediation. 1917 began with the German 
decision to resort to total war at sea. Rightly contemptuous 
of America s military strength, and wrongly supposing that 
they could force a decision long before American soldiers 
could become an important obstruction, the German milita- 
rists decided for war. Although President Wilson was appalled 
at the necessity, on April 2 he called for a declaration of war 



THE WORLD CHANGES 89 

and on April 6 Congress gave it to him. The country was more 
than ready for the decision. 

The resumption of unrestricted U-boat warfare had been 
to Stimson as to most Americans a clear signal that war was 
coming. He had quickly abandoned his earlier reluctance to 
go on long-distance speaking tours for preparedness, and the 
declaration of war found him in the middle of a two-week 
swing through those parts of the Middle West which had been 
reported least enthusiastic about war. Everywhere Stimson 
and his colleagues Frederic R. Coudert and Frederick W. 
Walcott preached the need for conscription at home as the 
only way of destroying German authority abroad, and they 
were greeted with great enthusiasm. In these speeches Stimson 
threw aside his earlier arguments about neutrality and for the 
first time vigorously discussed the basic issue of the war as he 
understood it both then and later : 

"America is not going to war with Germany merely because, 
as one of the accidents of the great struggle raging across the 
water, we have suffered an incidental injury, gross and unbear- 
able as that injury may be. ... It is because we realize that 
upon the battlefields of Europe there is at stake the future of 
the free institutions of the world." The German violations of 
neutrality were merely the inevitable result of the German 
theory that all rights belonged to the state. The world was a 
house divided between those who believed in the individual 
and democracy and those who believed in the state and 
autocracy. 

Thus the problem of war and peace seemed to Stimson to 
rise out of a still deeper problem, that of the basic relationship 
between man and the state. In 1917 it seemed clear that the 
war was essentially the result of the Prussian doctrine of state 
supremacy. It was the Prussian logic of the advantage of the 
stronger which had destroyed the notion of limited war. There 
were other elements in the war, of course, but Stimson always 
believed that the essential guilt belonged to Germany. 

And in later years, when he saw the rise of militaristic dic- 
tatorship in Italy, Japan, and Germany again, he found no 
reason to change his view that the primary threat to peace is 
always from those nations which deny individual freedom. 



go ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Nations which respected the dignity of the citizen, holding 
that the rights of man precede the rights of government, 
seemed not to be disposed toward aggression, whether they 
were have or have-not nations. But where the state was the 
object of highest honor and its advantage the only test of jus- 
tice, war and threats of war seemed to be the normal condition. 
If the world was to have either freedom or peace, it must de- 
stroy autocratic aggression. 

This was the issue that Stimson saw in 1917, and he believed 
that "Into such a struggle a man or nation may well go with 
lofty faith and burning ardor." 

In the grim aftermath of World War I it became fashion- 
able in some circles in the United States to scoff at the fiery 
idealism with which the country entered that struggle. And 
probably it is true that, as they thought and spoke in the terms 
of which Stimson's speech is typical, the American people had 
little real concept of the difficulty of the mission they had as- 
sumed. The glowing hopes of early 1917 did not long survive 
the armistice; they were based on innocence and ignorance. 
But it always remained Stimson's view that it was not in the 
war but in the peace that the tragic error was made. It was 
right that the United States should make war on German mili- 
tarism; it was right too that this warmaking should be under- 
taken in a spirit of exaltation ; but it was tragically wrong that 
the United States should not remain a member of the team 
after victory, bearing her full share of the joint responsibility 
for peace. 

President Wilson clearly stated in his final address to Con- 
gress that the issue of the war was what Stimson had said it 
was in January, and in his analysis he went one step farther: 
"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace 
of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples. . . . 
We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted 
that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for 
wrong done shall be observed among nations and their govern- 
ments that are observed among the individual citizens of civil- 
ized states." This was the naked truth, in Stimson's view, and 
he fully recognized Mr. Wilson's great service after 1917 in 
spreading this doctrine. 



THE WORLD CHANGES 91 

But there was one man who had preached this sermon earlier, 
when it was unpopular, and in later years Stimson believed 
that of all Theodore Roosevelt's great services to his country 
none was greater than his personal crusade in favor of a strong 
American stand against Germany. Colonel Roosevelt became 
venomously embittered against Mr. Wilson, and few will 
deny that this bitterness detracted from the grandeur of his 
preaching, but on two great issues, as early as 1915, he took 
stands that Stimson considered wholly right: he was in favor 
of action against Germany, placing righteousness ahead of 
peace, and he was in favor of a strong organization of the 
world's great powers after the war to keep the peace. It was 
true that even T.R. never publicly asked outright for a dec- 
laration of war until after January 31, 1917, and it was true 
too that his hatred and mistrust of Wilson later led to a disap- 
pointing weakening in his support for a League of Nations. 
But to Stimson he was and remained, in his work as a private 
citizen in 1915 and 1916, a magnificent leader, and it was with 
a feeling of homecoming that he accepted the mediation of 
Robert Bacon and responded to the Colonel's invitation to 
Oyster Bay at the end of 1915. From that day until the death 
of Mr. Roosevelt three years later, Stimson's admiration and 
affection for a great man was renewed in all its earlier force. 

In the spring of 1917 it was with an honest sense of dedica- 
tion that the American people faced the war. They were not, 
by this time, ignorant of war's meaning, for they been watch- 
ing the Western Front for more than thirty months. Yet Stim- 
son found, in his western tour, that they responded with 
enthusiasm to his speeches in favor of universal training, and 
when he went to Washington on his return Secretary of War 
Baker thanked him for the speeches and said that he felt the 
issue was now won. 

There was then only one thing for Stimson himself to do, 
and he did it On May 31, 1917, he was sworn in as a major in 
the Army. 

2. COLONEL STIMSON 

Stimson joined the Army in 1917 for many reasons, but the 
basic one was that, after preaching preparedness for years 



9 2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and war for months, he could not in conscience remain a civil- 
ian. Though in some ways it might be quixotic for a man 
nearly fifty to become a soldier, it was the only way in which 
Stimson could feel comfortable in his mind. And of course it 
was also true that he had envied combat soldiers for many 
years; he realized that men like Justice Holmes and General 
Charles F. Adams, whose Civil War reminiscences he had 
often listened to in Washington, had known a part of life he 
wished to know. For nearly twenty years he had felt a certain 
regret that he had not been free to go to the Spanish-Amer- 
ican War, and this time, in a much greater contest, he did not 
propose to be left behind. He heard many leading citizens of 
New York arguing that for the United States it would be a 
war of money and supplies, but he wholly disagreed. He him- 
self was urged to accept a flattering offer of civilian work in 
Washington, but he refused. His proper place was in the Army. 

His first hope had been to go as part of the division of vol- 
unteers which Theodore Roosevelt planned to raise. He had 
spent much time in 1916, when the Mexican situation was 
tense, helping T.R. with lists of officers, and in the spring of 
1917 he waited until Colonel Roosevelt's offer was finally re- 
jected by the Government before he felt free to join up on his 
own. Then he faced a problem; he was forty-nine, and his 
only field experience had been in very short sessions with the 
National Guard, for whose training he had as little respect as 
the sternest professional. How would he equip himself for the 
battlefield duty which alone would satisfy his desires? 

This problem could be solved only in gradual stages, as 
Stimson discovered after discussing his situation with Army 
friends. The first step, obviously, was to get into* uniform. This 
was quickly accomplished with the help of his old friend 
Enoch Crowder. General Crowder, the organizer of the draft, 
obtained for Stimson a commission as a judge advocate major 
in the Reserve, with the understanding that he might prepare 
himself for later service in the field artillery. He was assigned 
to the War College in Washington, and there he spent the 
summer of 1917, doing three things. In office hours he worked 
at the War College as a staff intelligence officer; in the early 
mornings he drilled with the artillery at Fort Myer; in the 



THE WORLD CHANGES 93 

evenings, under the direction of another old friend in the 
Regular Army, he studied the duties of artillery officers. It 
was a strenuous summer. 

But in September he got his chance. The field artillery was 
expanding rapidly, and in its search for field-grade officers for 
the new regiments the Army was running short of qualified 
men. Stimson had not hidden either his ambition or his studies, 
and as the summer waned he heard that his name was on a list 
of officers recommended for promotion to lieutenant colonel 
and assignment to field service in the artillery of the drafted 
divisions of the National Army. Then he heard that his name 
had been removed from the list by Secretary of War Baker. 

In later years, as the partisan feelings of 1917 and 1918 
faded, Stimson came to have great respect for Newton D. 
Baker, the Cleveland peace lover who became a distinguished 
Secretary of War. But he had strongly disapproved the deci- 
sion to reject the Roosevelt volunteers, and in 1917 and for 
some time after he believed that Baker lacked the force and 
knowledge for his assignment. It was not pleasant, therefore, 
to find that this man's decision had barred him from active 
service. But there was only one thing to do. Stimson obtained 
his superior's permission and requested an interview with the 
Secretary of War. 

Baker received him openly and cordially. He had removed 
Stimson's name, he said, because he did not want the Army 
used as a source of glory for politicians. Stimson replied that 
he had no political ambitions, that the assignment proposed 
was one for which he had diligently prepared, and that his 
military friends had advised him that he could serve the 
Army best as a tactical staff officer, assisting the commander 
of a field artillery regiment or brigade. "What is a tactical 
staff officer?" Baker asked. Stimson explained; Baker said he 
would reconsider; the interview closed. 

As he was leaving the Secretary's office Stimson passed the 
open door of the office of Major General Hugh L. Scott, the 
Chief of Staff. Scott had been away; Stimson saw him inside 
and went in to explain why he had called on the Secretary 
without Scott's permission. Scott was an old friend and fellow 
lover of the West. He heard the story; then he made Stimson 



94 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

repeat it while he took notes. Where would he like to be sent? 
What sort of duty did he desire? What was this list he had 
been on? Stimson tried to say that he had left his case with 
Baker. Scott merely repeated his questions. Stimson returned 
to his office, and within an hour Scott's aide telephoned. He 
reported that the Secretary of War had approved Stimson's 
appointment as Lieutenant Colonel, Field Artillery, National 
Army, and his immediate assignment for duty with troops at 
Camp Upton, Yaphank, Long Island. On his arrival at Upton 
Stimson was assigned as second in command of the 3O5th Reg- 
iment, Field Artillery, yyth Division, National Army. 

The 3O5th Field Artillery was the unit of which Stimson 
always thought first in later years when he looked back at the 
war. Although he was twice detached from it, suffering the 
disappointment of leaving it for good just as it was going into 
its first offensive action, the so^th was his outfit. In two three- 
month stretches, in the autumn of 1917 and the summer of 
1918, he acquired a deep and lasting affection for the unit and 
all its members. He considered it a remarkable regiment. 

Most of the officers were ex-civilians, men much like him- 
self, but all much younger, who had entered officers' training 
camps before or just after the outbreak of war. Mainly New 
Yorkers, they were mostly young college graduates. They 
were enthusiastic, inventive, and impatient to be at the front. 
Their sense of honor was rigorous, and they were natural 
leaders; if the method of their selection was perhaps less dem- 
ocratic than methods Stimson was to approve one war later, 
they nevertheless fully justified their privileges in training 
and action. 

But the real revelation to Stimson was the quailty of the 
enlisted men of the regiment. The energy and ability of the 
young officers was no more than he would have expected from 
what he had seen at Plattsburg, but he was joyfully astonished 
at the work of the drafted soldiers of New York City and its 
environs. These men, representing almost every national strain 
in the American melting pot, had had little experience of 
heavy physical exertion, and little formal education. As a 
group they seemed small and underfed. But they had other 
qualities, the qualities that make for survival in a metropolis. 



THE WORLD CHANGES 95 

They were quick, resilient, and endlessly resourceful. They 
took the Army as it came, and they showed a capacity for 
pride in their performance that seemed wholly incompatible 
with their assumed air of urban cynicism. The men and their 
Plattsburg officers made a wonderful team. 

The initial training of the regiment at Upton made heavy 
demands on both officers and men. The National Army paid 
the price of unpreparedness. There were no guns for training, 
no horses to pull them, and no wire communications, until 
Stimson unearthed a little of all three through grateful clients. 
There was no artillery range in the crowded area around the 
camp until he laid it out. Other shortages were filled by other 
officers who were not of the red-tape and clay-pipe school. 
The so^th, Stimson was sure, was better at this game than 
other parts of the division, and the division was better than 
other divisions. This may have been mere unit pride, but it 
was a fact that the War Department, having originally 
planned that the 77th should be a training ground for replace- 
ments, changed its plans after watching the division develop. 
It was the first division of the National Army to enter the line 
in France. 

But before that time Stimson had been detached and sent 
overseas on his own. In December the division commander 
offered him a chance to go to France to attend a school at Lan- 
gres where general staff corps officers were being produced for 
the new Army. It was a wrench to leave his regiment, but this 
new assignment was directly in line with his hope to become a 
tactical staff officer, and he remained fearful that someone in 
Washington might decide to keep him at home; it seemed 
well to move toward the sound of the guns. So Christmas, 
1917, found him at sea in the war zone; for the first time in 
twenty-four years of marriage he faced a prolonged separa- 
tion from his wife. He was to be overseas nine months; the 
loneliness of those months was beyond anything he had known 
before or was to know again. An added sadness was the recent 
death of his father. But Dr. Stimson had visited the front lines 
himself, bringing antitoxins from America. When he sailed, 
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson knew that he was carrying on as 
his father would desire. And Mrs. Stimson's reaction was to 



96 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

make strenuous efforts to persuade her husband that she too 
should find a way to France. 

When he arrived in Paris, Stimson learned that the staff 
school was not ready for him, and he was attached for a month 
to the ^ist Division of the British Army, for training. This 
training period with the famous Highland Division was a 
high point in his Army experience. The 5ist had just com- 
pleted a prolonged and costly fight in the battle of Cambrai. 
When Stimson arrived, its sector was quiet, and a few days 
later it was pulled back a few miles, out of the line. But the 
visiting American found more than enough opportunities to 
visit the forward areas, with corps or division officers as his 
guides. Those British officers had an attitude toward both 
bombing and shellfire which seemed to Stimson unreasonably 
casual. It was some time before he accustomed himself to the 
unaffected nonchalance of his colleagues in the face of fire. 
Granted that the danger was not prohibitive, he never felt it 
entirely wise to prefer an open road to a muddy trench just 
because one's boots were clean and the Boche only shelled the 
road at fixed intervals. But it gave him a taste of fire, and he 
behaved like a perfect guest; when his British hosts threw 
aside their helmets just at the moment when they might be- 
come useful, he followed suit, and when he was told that three 
officers were safe walking in an observed field because 'the 
Boche never wastes shells on less than four/ he tried to be- 
lieve it. 

Whatever their idiosyncrasies, the Scots knew their trade; 
both as professional training and as an apprenticeship in the 
battle zone, Stimson's visit was extremely valuable. And as he 
examined the casualty reports of the division and listened to 
the details of its magnificent record, he acquired an admira- 
tion for the British nation in arms that lasted for the rest of 
his life. 

His class at the staff school finally opened at the end of Feb- 
ruary. There he found himself among friends; the officers 
studying at Langres included such old friends as Major 
George Patton, Herbert Parsons, and Willard Straight. For 
twelve weeks Stimson worked as a student of staff duties, and 
worked hard. It was the most rigorous professional training 



THE WORLD CHANGES 97 

he ever had, and it served him well both in the following 
months and many years later. After his successful completion 
of the General Staff course, he always felt able to speak as 
something more than a mere amateur on military subjects. It 
was fortunate that he was kept busy, for only hard w r ork and 
high hopes could keep a man calm during the spring of 1918, 
as the Germans launched against the British Army the first 
of their last great attacks. 

Graduating from the General Staff College in May, Stim- 
son paid a brief visit to the 26th Division on a quiet sector of 
the front and then repaired to GHQ at Chaumont to learn his 
new assignment. He had given much thought to this question 
himself; should he go at once to duty on a division general 
staff? Would it not be better to mark himself first as basically 
a line officer? His Army friends advised the latter course, if 
he had any voice in the matter, and fortunately he did. Gen- 
eral Pershing, at Chaumont, evidently puzzled by the prob- 
lem of placing an ex-Secretary of War, asked Stimson what 
he wanted to do, and his face cleared wonderfully when Stim- 
son replied that he would like to rejoin the newly arrived 77th 
Division. So on the last day of May he went back to his old 
regiment, now in final training outside Bordeaux at Souge. 

The 77th had changed little since the previous autumn; 
Stimson had greatly gained by his six months of separate serv- 
ice, and he returned with the glamour of a relatively battle- 
scarred veteran. He had also learned a good deal about artil- 
lery and about staff work, and his regimental and divisional 
commanders made energetic use of his extra knowledge. The 
last weeks before the division moved forward were very busy 
ones, but Stimson had the good fortune, as an elderly and pre- 
sumably trustworthy officer, to be ordered to Paris on division 
business just in time to see the great Fourth of July parade. 

There followed a very crowded week. The 77th was or- 
dered into the line in a quiet sector near Baccarat, at the south- 
ern end of the front Just before the 305^1 went into position, 
the major commanding the first battalion was promoted and 
removed to the division staff. Stimson took over, temporarily, 
and on July n his battalion led the regiment into position. 
The same day he gave the order which sent off what he be- 



9 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

lieved was the first shell fired against the Germans by the 
National Army. 2 The 305 th had begun to fight. 

For the next three weeks he was wonderfully happy. To 
command first-class troops at the front had been his pre-emi- 
nent ambition since the beginning of his service. The Baccarat 
sector was quiet, so that the hideous side of war was absent. It 
was a realistic dress rehearsal for the work which all were 
expecting later. There were one or two alarms and tense mo- 
ments, but in the main it was a quiet period, and Stimson's 
most important decision was to disregard a panicky request 
for fire that would have brought his shells down on American 
positions. He and his troops kept busy, camouflaging their 
position, practicing their communication signals, and getting 
the hang of active service. As they worked, they began to feel 
that heartening self-confidence that comes to a good unit 
sometime in its first campaign when the men in it suddenly 
understand that now they are veterans now they know. For 
the only thing worse than the fear that fills all battlefields is 
the fear of fear that fills the hearts of men who have not 
fought. The so^th was not fully blooded in the Baccarat sec- 
tor, but it ceased to be a green unit. 

And then, on August 2, after only three weeks in the line, 
Stimson was ordered home. The order was a compliment; he 
was one of two non-Regular officers among twenty-one selected 
by name at GHQ for promotion and the command of newly 
formed artillery regiments. And he left a unit which wanted 
him back; the division commander placed on record his hope 
that if Stimson should return to France, he might be given 
command of a regiment in the 77th. Professionally, it was all 
very gratifying, and of course it also meant that he would 
soon be with Mrs. Stimson again. But it was a disappoint- 
ment nevertheless, and a grave one, for it meant that he must 
leave his own battalion just as the real fighting was about to 
begin. If he could have foreseen that the war would end be- 
fore he could get back, Stimson might perhaps have broken 
his invariable rule and asked for a change of military orders 



THE WORLD CHANGES 99 

from General Pershing. But in August, -1918, all the Ameri- 
cans in France were talking of the great operations planned 
for 1919, so Stimson followed orders and hoped for the best. 
He left his outfit, and his fighting service came to an end. 

The remainder of his war service is quickly told. He re- 
turned to ^he States, had a week's leave, and then, on being 
given his choice of the new regiments, took over the 3ist Ar- 
tillery at Camp Meade. He explained his choice in a letter 
to Herbert Parsons : "It was well started and nearest to the 
coast for a return." In September and October Camp Meade 
was struck by the flu epidemic, and his new regiment suffered 
more deaths and casualties than artillery troops would ordi- 
narily lose in a major battle. Daily Stimson visited his men 
in the wards, refusing to use the ghastly white masks that med- 
ical personnel were wearing. It was a grim duty, and harder 
for him than anything he had seen or done at the front. 

But the epidemic was short, and even while it raged the 
unit was busy. To train and lead a regiment was a new and 
searching test, but these were good troops, and although he 
could now see the war ending, Stimson kept at it. This time 
the equipment was at hand he even had a band. He laid out 
ranges ; he guided his officers ; he preached unit pride, and he 
could feel the regiment begin to come alive. He also had more 
unusual problems to solve : to fight the fear of flu he dosed his 
command with an elixir guaranteed harmless by Johns Hop- 
kins and advertised by Stimson as a help against flu and the 
sickness rate did go down; he ordered his enthusiastic but 
somewhat unimaginative band to stop including the dead march 
in its repertoire of hospital music. In short, he did all the hun- 
dred and one things that the colonel of a brand-new unit must 
do. But probably, if the soldiers of the 3ist Artillery remem- 
bered Stimson at all, they remembered him for this : after the 
armistice his was the first regiment in the country to be dis- 
charged. On December 9, 1918, he was himself once more a 
civilian. He later joined the Reserve and became a brigadier 
general, but he was mustered out as a colonel, and for the rest 
of his life "Colonel" was a title that his close friends often 
used. 

Stimson's year and a half in the Army marked the fulfill- 



ioo ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

merit of a twenty-year hope that if the country should have 
another war while he was young enough he would be able to 
go on active service as a soldier. Although he never faced the 
final test of battle in a great offensive or a last-ditch stand, he 
saw enough of war and danger to be able to feel certain that 
he was a good soldier ; this knowledge was important to him. 
And the war taught him many things ; most of all, perhaps, it 
taught him the horror of war, but he also saw at firsthand the 
color of the courage of British and French and American 
troops, and he learned as he worked with the men of his own 
Army that the strength and spirit of America was not confined 
to any group or class. 'It was my greatest lesson in American 
democracy. 3 * 



*From my discussions with Mr. Stimson have come many observations and recol- 
lections which I have quoted. In order to set off these remembered comments from 
passages found in contemporary records, I have in these cases used the single and 
not the double quotation marks. McGEORGE BUNDY 



CHAPTER V 

As Private Citizen 



I. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS FIGHT 

IN 1919 and 1920 Stimson was a private citizen, but he had 
an active part in the prolonged struggle over the great na- 
tional and international problem of those years : the fight for 
the League of Nations. The rejection of the League was to 
him the greatest error made by the United States in the twen- 
tieth century, and it happened that the difficulties involved in 
the struggle were to reappear more than ever in the later years 
of his public service. 

Stimson never believed that the great rejection of responsi- 
bility which took place in 1920 was either inevitable or due 
solely to any single group of men. It was a most difficult and 
complicated subject, and the events which led to the final 
tragic result were not to be explained by easy phrases. There 
were times when Stimson inclined to put the weight of re- 
sponsibility on Woodrow Wilson, and other times when his 
main annoyance was directed at the Republican "irrecon- 
cilables." 

The idea of the League and the specific provisions con- 
tained in the Covenant were of course the product of many 
minds in many nations, but to the people of the United States, 
in 1919, the League was Mr. Wilson's League. In Stimson's 
view this was a grave misfortune. Many of the men who 
should have been among the strong supporters of the League 
of Nations had become, since 1914, bitter enemies of Wood- 
row Wilson. These men were in such a frame of mind that if 
the President had presented them with the Kingdom of 
Heaven they would have found it immoral and un-American. 



102 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

At the same time, as Stimson saw it, to the degree that the 
League was Mr. Wilson's, it contained certain weaknesses. 
The President failed to take with him to Paris any leading 
Republicans not even Elihu Root, who was pre-eminently 
fitted to go; he appealed unsuccessfully for a Democratic 
Congress just two months before he sailed; and when he got 
to Paris he continuously ignored rising reports of opposition 
at home. 

Further and to Stimson this was his greatest error of 
all Mr. Wilson was persuaded that he must produce a full- 
fledged Covenant, complete in all its parts and wholly up to 
date in its assertion of the joint responsibility of all the nations 
for the maintenance of peace. This was an attitude which rose 
from the President's own clear understanding of the true 
meaning of modern war, but to Stimson it always seemed that 
in his obstinate effort to enact his personal version in a nation 
which was learning its new lessons slowly and reluctantly, Mr. 
Wilson showed a terrible lack of appreciation of the political 
realities of the situation. This was a point which he often 
discussed with Elihu Root in this period, and it seemed to him 
then and later to be near the heart of the failure of the United 
States after World War I. 

The great lesson of that war was that the United States 
could not remain aloof from world affairs and still keep 
the world "safe for democracy." This much, in 1918, was 
generally known and understood. What was not understood, 
because it was unpleasant, was the kind and degree of re- 
sponsibility which the country must assume. To Mr. Wilson, 
whose mind was clear and logical in the extreme, the im- 
plications of the new doctrine were as easy as any other new 
concept, and he allowed it to be firmly embedded in the 
famous Article X of the Covenant, under which member 
nations undertook "to respect and preserve as against external 
aggression the territorial integrity and existing political in- 
tegrity of all members of the League." To such Americans 
as Elihu Root this provision, unamended, seemed most unwise, 
for they believed that it committed the United States to more 
than its people would approve. It seemed very improbable that 
Americans would honor this obligation in the case of renewed 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN 103 

Balkan struggles, for example, and Mr. Root and Stimson, 
with many others, argued that a failure to do what was 
promised would inevitably destroy the whole usefulness of 
the League. This forecast was confirmed in melancholy fashion 
by the actions of other nations fifteen years later. 

What seemed preferable, to Mr. Root and to his student 
Stimson, was that the League should have a much more 
general charter, and that it should be permitted to grow and 
develop gradually, adding to its formal obligations only as 
the genuine sentiment of the nations permitted. In this fashion, 
they believed, the slowly growing spirit of international re- 
sponsibility might be fostered, unchecked by the disillusion- 
ment of broken pledges. To them the central requirement was 
for a constantly available international meeting-ground. The 
ancient pride of sovereign nations could not be ended in a day, 
but if international discussion could become a regular habit, 
and if the United States, particularly, could learn to consider 
herself a participant in the world's problems, then the resort 
to war might not become necessary. 

It must not be supposed that either Mr. Root or Stimson 
objected to Mr. Wilson's basic purpose. They fully agreed 
with him that a new era was coming in international law 
and that the old doctrine of neutrality must be abandoned. As 
Stimson wrote, in February, 1919, in an open letter to Will 
Hays, the Republican National Chairman, "The time is surely 
coming when in international law an act of aggression by one 
nation upon another will be regarded as an offense against the 
community of nations ; just as in the development of municipal 
law a homicide has become an offense against the state instead 
of merely a matter of redress by the victim's family. So I feel 
that one country should take advantage of this time to help 
move the world along towards that condition of development." 

Thus as he faced the problem of the League of Nations and 
its draft Covenant in March, 1919, Stimson had a double atti- 
tude. First and foremost, he was unequivocally in favor of 
American participation in the League. But secondly, he was 
opposed to unreserved ratification of the Covenant, and partic- 
ularly to the acceptance of Article X. And Mr. Wilson and 



io 4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the Senate "irreconcilables" between them blocked the way 
to ratification of the sort of League he wanted. 

Stimson's position was best expressed in the reservations 
proposed by Elihu Root in June, 1919, and he never retreated 
from his belief that ratification with the Root reservations 
would have been the best course. Unfortunately the agent of 
the Root position in the Senate was Henry Cabot Lodge. 
Lodge himself was probably not at first an "irreconcilable" ; 
but he was the Senate majority leader, and his principal ob- 
ject in life was to hold the Republican party together. To do 
this, he moved farther and farther in the direction of such 
bitter-end opponents of any and all Leagues as William E. 
Borah, Hiram Johnson, and Frank B. Brandegee. The Root 
reservations did not reach the Senate floor unchanged. 
Through the summer of 1919 the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee under Lodge sat on the treaty and waited for pub- 
lic support of Mr. Wilson's League to die down. In Novem- 
ber, when the mind of the country had been thoroughly con- 
fused and Mr. Wilson's health was giving way, Lodge brought 
to the vote a treaty loaded with his own, the Lodge reserva- 
tions. There was something in the Lodge reservations for 
everybody; all of Mr. Root's basic ideas were there, but so 
were many more, designed partly to appease nationalists and 
partly to anger Mr. Wilson. To Stimson the Lodge reserva- 
tions, taken together, were wholly unsatisfactory, "very harsh 
and unpleasant in tone." (Diary December 3, 1919) His view 
was the view of many a Republican, and he always believed 
that if the moderate Republican senators and the President 
had been able to get together, a satisfactory compromise could 
have been reached. But there was no outstanding leader to 
show the way to the Republican moderates, and on his side 
the ailing Wilson proved more stubborn than ever. The Dem- 
ocrats voted solidly against ratification with the Lodge reser- 
vations, and the treaty went unratified. 

Throughout 1920 Stimson continued to hope for ratification 
of one kind or another. And if in 1919 his principal complaint 
was against Wilson, in 1920 he began to feel that his real 
enemies were the Republican die-hards. In the preconvention 
campaign he strongly supported the candidacy of his friend 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN 105 

Leonard Wood, who was in his view the most commanding 
national leader available. Wood was a believer in a modified 
League, and he was not the man to sell out to the die-hards. 
But in the notorious Chicago convention of 1920 the die-hard 
senators threw the nomination to Warren G. Harding. 

Then Stimson, in company with almost all the leaders of his 
party, made a serious mistake, one which he characterized in 
1947 as 'a blunder.' He supported Harding, on the ground 
that Harding's election would mean ratification with proper 
reservations as to Article X, and he joined in the signing of 
the famous Statement of Thirty-one Republicans, which 
urged the election of Harding as the best way into the League. 
This statement, partly designed to strengthen Harding's in- 
clination toward the League but mainly written to keep pro- 
League voters in the Republican party, represented the honest 
sentiments and hopes of the loyal Republicans who signed it. 
Events soon proved that these men were deceived and 
their hopes unfounded. Stimson had his moments of misgiving 
during the campaign and regularly denounced the Republi- 
can "irreconcilables." But in later years the man whose posi- 
tion he admired most in the 1920 campaign was Herbert Par- 
sons, who left the party on the League issue. Parsons and 
Stimson had worked together in New York in early 1920 to 
strengthen the pro-League wing of the Republican party; in 
late 1919 when Parsons first discussed the possibility of a bolt, 
Stimson had expressed his sympathy. "I told him that ... if 
the situation ever came to a point where the Republican party 
stood for a selfish isolation of America as against a participa- 
tion in the burdens of the world at the present time by this 
country, I should certainly vote against the Republican 
party." (Diary, November 26, 1919) In the campaign of 1920 
Stimson and most of his friends were self-deceived. Parsons 
was not; he saw through the double-talk of Harding and de- 
liberately broke with the Republicans to support Cox. For a 
man whose whole public career had been built on solid Re- 
publicanism and whose experience was largely in the mechan- 
ics of party organization and discipline, it was a bold and 
gallant decision. When Herbert Parsons died, five years 
later, Stimson wrote of him : "He never performed a greater 



io6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

act of courage or of self-abnegation than in making his deci- 
sion to leave the party in which he had labored so long and on 
whose welfare and progress the efforts of his whole life had 
been expended. His spirit was that of a crusader. Well would 
it have been for us if more of that spirit had characterized the 
postwar attitude of us all towards our governmental prob- 
lems." 1 

Yet from another standpoint, it was probably fortunate for 
Stimson's later usefulness that he did not follow Parsons in 
1920. If he had broken with his party, he would in all prob- 
ability not have been called back to public service at any time 
in the following twelve years, and it is not likely that he could 
ever have made himself a leading Democrat. Parsons himself 
lost much of his former prestige and influence after 1920, 
whereas Stimson had the good fortune to be able to work for 
the principles both believed in, first as a private citizen and 
later in public life. The problem both men faced in 1920 was 
one of those trying cases which have no certain answer; no 
decision in American political life is more difficult than the 
choice of whether or not to leave one's party. What Stimson 
regretted, looking back at 1920, was not his decision to remain 
a Republican ; for that there was probably sound justification. 
What he could not forgive was his honest but wholly mistaken 
conclusion that Harding's election was desirable from the 
standpoint of those who believed in the League of Nations. 
He had signed the letter of the thirty-one in response to the 
leadership of men like Elihu Root, and in this decision he had 
distinguished company. But he would have done better not to 
sign that letter and not to write, as he had, opposing the posi- 
tion taken by Parsons. He would have done better to keep still. 

With the election of President Harding, all hope of Amer- 
ican participation in the League soon died. In the years that 
followed, the temper of the American people became con- 
stantly more isolationist, and the penalty of this error was vis- 
ited upon the nation and the world in later events which will 
occupy the bulk of this book. What killed the League in 
America? Was it the blindness of its creator or the malevolent 
skill of its few wholehearted enemies? To Stimson it was al- 
ways both, but he could see in 1947 what as a loyal Republican 

1 Letter to the New York Times, September 23, 1925. 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN 107 

he had missed in 1920, that in the errors of Woodrow Wilson 
there was always a certain prophetic grandeur. Even if he was 
wrong on Article X, he was wrong in the right direction. And 
his stubbornness was the stubbornness of high principle. For 
the men who hated the very notion of a League Stimson would 
not speak so kindly. They must have been sincere, but it was a 
sincerity of purblind and admitted nationalistic selfishness, 
a sincerity of ignorant refusal to admit that the world 
changes, a sincerity embittered in almost every case by a hatred 
of the foreigner. It was the sort of sincerity, in short, from 
which wars are bred. And it bred one. 

2. AT THE BAR 

Warren G. Harding was the only President between Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman under whom Stimson 
took no federal oath of office. He shared the oblivion which 
overtook most of the younger eastern Republicans during the 
early 1 920*8. He did not feel any grievance on this account, 
nor was he ever inclined to judge harshly the well-meaning 
man whom kingmakers had thrust into an office he was wholly 
unequipped to fill. Toward the men in the Harding adminis- 
tration whose active corruption completed the ten-year decline 
of his party's standing before the country, he was less charita- 
ble, and he was glad that the work of cleaning the stables was 
in the end largely accomplished by Republican lawyers like 
Harlan Stone and Owen Roberts, though the initial disclo- 
sures of corruption were made by zealous and distinguished 
Democrats. 

Between 1918 and 1927 Stimson held no federal office of 
any kind, yet he retained his interest in public affairs. He was 
active in behalf of his favorite reform, the executive budget; 
both in New York and in Washington he argued and testified 
for its adoption. As one of the early members of the American 
Legion he was a stern and outspoken opponent of the bonus. 
As a New York lawyer he protested when in the red scare of 
1920 the New York Assembly refused to seat duly elected So- 
cialist members; this protest contains a principle which 
seemed to him of some importance in 1947: 



io8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

"I am one of those who believe that our American system of 
government is, as a whole, the best that has yet been devised 
upon this earth, and I have not the slightest sympathy with or 
faith in the tenets of Socialism. Yet even I can think of some 
matters in which I believe our government can be improved, 
and I hope during the remainder of my life to be free to urge 
upon my fellow citizens the desirability of the changes and 
reforms that I think desirable to make life in America more 
just, more fair, and more happy for the average man. If I be- 
lieve this, what right have I to deny to the man who believes 
in Socialism or in a soviet government the opportunity of en- 
deavoring to persuade a majority of the inhabitants of Amer- 
ica that a government and a society framed according to his 
beliefs will be best for America provided always he confines 
himself to the democratic methods of peaceful persuasion to 
accomplish his ends?" 2 

Protests of this kind, and action wherever necessary in de- 
fense of basic liberties, always seemed to Stimson a duty par- 
ticularly incumbent on members of the bar. It was as a private 
lawyer that he wrote this letter, and it was as a private lawyer 
that he spent the bulk of his time in the years after World 
War I. 

For the first time in more than a decade, his private practice 
became his primary interest. He returned from the war to find 
that as the head of the family, after his father's death, he had 
increased financial responsibilities, and in the following eight 
years he undertook a series of major cases. He also attended 
with care and energy to his private investments and became in 
this period a rich man. After 1928 his private affairs never 
again became his leading interest, but the financial freedom 
which he achieved in the postwar decade was sustained and 
protected for him by devoted friends. 

This book is a record of Stimson's public service, and we 
unfortunately cannot stop to consider the ins and outs of even 
his major law cases. He defended the makers of cement against 
an antitrust suit; he handled one side of the celebrated South- 
mayd Will case; he was retained by the bituminous coal 
operators to file a brief before a Government commission in- 

2 Letter to the New York Tribune, published January 16, 1920. 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN rog 

vestigating the coal industry. Both the cement case and the 
coal case were affected with a public interest, and in both 
cases Stimson found his basic opinion reinforced by his expe- 
rience. The cement case w T as an excellent illustration of the 
dangers of "government by indictment"; the cement com- 
panies were guilty, under the letter of the law, but what they 
had done had been part of the w r ar effort, with the direct en- 
couragement of the Government. 

The coal brief \vas a study in industrial strife. The burden 
of Stimson's argument was that members of the United Mine 
Workers, under John L. Lewis, had been guilty of outrageous 
crimes of violence, culminating in the hideous massacre of 
1922 at Herrin, Illinois. The self -proclaimed "liberals" who 
were always ready to do battle against the use of force by 
owners seemed to Stimson disgracefully quiet in their placid 
contemplation of such lawlessness as the Herrin affair. At the 
same time his study of the coal industry and his dealings with 
the coal operators showed him that on both sides of the fence 
there was a history of ruthlessness, and in a sense the irrespon- 
sibility of capital struck him as the more culpable, because he 
continued to believe that men of wealth and power had special 
obligations to the community. 

The i92o's are remembered now mainly as a time of false 
hopes and national complacency. Stimson could not claim, in 
1947, that he had foreseen the breakdown that occurred in 
1929, or that during the twenties he was fully aware of the 
degree to which the work of reform remained unfinished. But 
he thought it wrong to set those years and their achievement 
entirely to one side. For this was a time of industrial expan- 
sion, and of economic development, as well as a time of ex- 
travagance and irresponsibility. The country was complacent, 
yet its accomplishment was not negligible. In these years pri- 
vate philanthropy and private charity flourished as never be- 
fore, and if the spirit of reform largely vanished from the 
national scene, it found an outlet in some of the states, where 
men like Alfred E. Smith were at work, and in many local 
communities. Stimson himself was active in state reform; 
Smith consulted him frequently, and he served under Charles 
E. Hughes on a Commission for Reorganizing the State De- 



no ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

partments which did much to bring to life the reforms first 
put forth in the stillborn constitution of 1915. And in many 
boards and committees in New York City, Stimson like other 
citizens tried to do his part in community life. In later years, 
when young men spoke to him with enthusiasm of the work of 
the New Deal, he always insisted that the work done in towns 
and cities, and in the states, was of the greatest importance ; he 
remained always a believer in strong national government, but 
he also believed in local self-government and in private charity. 
To these local undertakings he devoted himself in the twen- 
ties, as he had done, indeed, in one degree or another all his 
life, in the time that was left over from his private business. 

3. THE PEACE OF TIPITAPA 

Stimson's return to active public service began in 1926. In 
the spring of that year he undertook an advisory brief for the 
State Department in the tangled dispute between Chile and 
Peru over the provinces of Tacna and Arica. The Tacna- 
Arica case need not detain us here ; it was a legacy from the 
war of 1879 between Chile and Peru; Secretary Hughes 
began, Secretary Kellogg continued, and President Hoover 
completed a prolonged and complex work of mediation by 
which the matter was settled. Stimson never had more than a 
minor part in the affair. Its principal value to him was in its 
practical confirmation of a view he had long held : the notion 
of honest elections and plebiscites is not a fruitful one in most 
Latin American countries in any critical issue, unless those 
plebiscites and elections are impartially guided by an outside 
agency. The Tacna-Arica area, in 1926, was under Chilean 
control, and Stimson after careful study concluded that any 
plebiscite conducted in an area dominated by Chilean police 
would have a result hardly likely to satisfy Peru, or even dis- 
interested observers. 

After the Tacna-Arica case Stimson undertook a semiofficial 
visit to the Philippines where his old friend Leonard Wood 
was Governor General. The details of this voyage must wait 
for another chapter. What is important here is that on his 
return Stimson had two friendly meetings with President Cal- 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN in 

vin Coolidge. Mr. Coolidge proved a good listener, and Stim- 
son liked both his caution and his evident intention to say no 
more than he would do. He was already an admirer of Mr. 
Coolidge's courage in standing for economy in an extravagant 
era, and although he never felt that this old-line Yankee was 
one of the outstanding presidents of his time, he soon found 
that Mr. Coolidge was a wholly satisfactory chief; he gave 
his chosen subordinates unreserved confidence, and he never 
let them down. 

His first assignment from President Coolidge came in the 
spring of 1927, when he was sent as a special emissary to Nic- 
aragua. He was given a full grant of power direct from the 
President to act for the United States Government in seeking 
a solution to an intolerable situation. It was a flattering assign- 
ment, for the position in Nicaragua w r as both complex and 
dangerous. Stimson and his wife spent a month in the little 
tropical republic, and they both believed, then and later, that 
hardly any single month in their lives was better spent. Stim- 
son's first book was written as a description of the problem of 
American policy in Nicaragua and of his own part in the ne\v 
departure of 1927, and to that book the reader must turn for 
his detailed view of the matter. 3 Only a bare outline can here 
be given. 

Nicaragua in 1927 was torn by a bitter civil war between 
the two traditional opposing parties, the Liberals and the Con- 
servatives. The war was a violent expression of the continuing 
struggle for power between rival oligarchic groups in a coun- 
try few of whose 700,000 inhabitants were sufficiently edu- 
cated or alert to be politically important. The methods of the 
war were typical of civil strife in politically backward 
countries; the armies on both sides were raised by impress- 
ment from the lower classes ; the countryside was full of armed 
deserters ; the fields were untilled ; the already shaky national 
economy was being further weakened by the waste of war and 
civil unrest. In actual combat both armies were brave and 
bitter, but their courage was not accompanied by generosity 
toward the vanquished. No prisoners were being taken by 
either side. 

3 American Policy in Nicaragua, Scribner's, 1927. 



ii2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The American interest in Nicaragua was dual. 4 First, under 
the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary, the United 
States had assumed a special responsibility for the treatment 
given by her Latin neighbors to foreign nationals and foreign 
property; the civil strife of 1926 and 1927 produced strong 
hints from Great Britain and others to the effect that if the 
Americans would not permit other foreigners to protect them- 
selves, they must provide a satisfactory substitute. 

At the same time Nicaragua, strategically located near the 
Panama Canal, was a country whose independence and integ- 
rity must be especially protected by the United States. Thus, 
lacking any smallest desire to dictate or dominate in the in- 
ternal affairs of any Latin American country, the American 
Government since 1912 had felt it necessary to post marines 
in Nicaragua for the maintenance of civil peace at least in 
neutral zones where the peculiarly unselective warmaking of 
the combatants should not penetrate. 

In 1925, when a coalition government appeared to be in 
peaceful and unchallenged control of the country, the Amer- 
ican marines, 100 in number, were withdrawn. The coalition 
government was promptly overthrown by an extremist conser- 
vative named Chamorro. Denied recognition by the United 
States, in accordance with the treaty of 1923, Chamorro was 
eventually forced to resign. The Civil War of 1926 and 1927 
was essentially a war for the succession to Chamorro. The 
Conservative Diaz, recognized by the United States and most 
European nations, was opposed by the Liberal Sacasa, who 
enjoyed the recognition and military aid of revolutionary 
Mexico. Having at first placed an embargo on all shipments 
of arms or ammunition to Nicaragua, the United States in 
early 1927 responded to the Mexican activities by opening to 
the Conservatives the right of military purchase in the United 
States. The unhappy war in Nicaragua then acquired a new 
and sensitive aspect as an issue between the Americans and 
their Mexican neighbors. Feeling in Latin America was high, 
and not favorable to Uncle Sam. 

To Stimson it seemed clear that the first and great objective 

4 For a more detailed discussion of the basis of American policy in Latin America 
as Stimson understood it see pp. 174-187. 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN 113 

was to end the war as quickly and as fairly as possible. Al- 
though the American Government had endorsed Diaz, it was 
clear that this was not a case in which the right was all on one 
side. Indeed, it seemed to Stimson as if the Liberals and the 
Conservatives were essentially very similar, even in their mu- 
tual hatred. But his first assignment was to investigate and 
report, and he accordingly suspended judgment until he 
should have a chance to see the situation on the ground. 

In the first ten days of his visit he conferred at length with 
the Americans on the spot and with Nicaraguans of all schools 
of opinion. He talked with President Diaz and with the ex- 
treme Conservatives; he talked with the Liberals in their 
stronghold at Leon; he held himself open in Managua to vis- 
itors who wished to present their views. Three things speedily 
became clear. First, the civil war was hopelessly stalemated ; 
both sides were incapable of effective offensive action; the 
Conservative superiority in numbers was matched by the su- 
perior military skill of the Liberal general. If the war con- 
tinued, neither side could win and all Nicaragua must be the 
loser. Second, the bulk of the people, including even the active 
Liberals and Conservatives, were heartily sick of war. Stimson 
learned of this feeling from his own meetings, and he found 
forceful confirmation in the experiences of Mrs. Stimson, who 
held a series of meetings with Nicaraguan women. Third, 
most Nicaraguans, on both sides, would be happy to see the 
war ended by a promise of mediation and good offices from 
the United States, and by "good offices" they meant American 
supervision of a new national election. This faith in American 
honor was somewhat surprising, although very gratifying, for 
it had been widely announced that the Liberals, enjoying 
Mexican support, were an anti-Yankee party. It at once be- 
came possible for Stimson to hope that his mission might 
result in a return of peace. And so it turned out. 

The detailed terms of the settlement finally arranged three 
weeks after Stimson landed need not concern us here. It was 
provided that Diaz should continue as President until 1928, 
when the regular scheduled national election would be held 
under American guarantees of fairness and American control. 
Meanwhile both sides were disarmed and a general amnesty 



ii 4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was proclaimed, and the maintenance of civil order in Nica- 
ragua became the responsibility of a new constabulary trained 
and initially led by American marines. The war ended and, 
with the exception of continued guerrilla operations by one of 
the Liberal leaders who failed to honor his personal pledge, 
peace came to Nicaragua. 

In negotiating this settlement Stimson was again and again 
reminded of his dictum that trust begets trust. Once he had 
persuaded the leaders on both sides that his purpose was hon- 
orable and his objective the restoration of a fair and indepen- 
dent peace, he found them, almost without exception, frank, 
moderate and co-operative. He was particularly impressed by 
the manner and bearing of General Moncada, the Liberal 
leader. Moncada was the most important single figure in- 
volved in the negotiations ; it was his decision that would de- 
termine whether or not the Liberal army should continue to 
fight. Stimson's first meeting with him took place in the little 
town of Tipitapa on May 4; it lasted thirty minutes and re- 
sulted in a full agreement. This agreement involved a rather 
curious condition, one for which Stimson was widely criti- 
cized in some circles but of which he always remained ex- 
tremely proud. Moncada accepted the basic conditions of the 
peace settlement as given above, but he found the continuance 
of Diaz through 1928 a stiff pill for himself and a stiff er one 
for his troops, who after all had been fighting Diaz all winter. 
He therefore asked for, and Stimson gave him, a letter stating 
that as a condition to its supervision of elections the United 
States would insist on the retention of Diaz and on a general 
disarmament. This letter was in form a threat that if Moncada 
did not accept, the United States would forcibly support the 
Diaz Government. But in fact it was merely a method of assist- 
ing the statesmanlike labors of Moncada. Stimson would have 
been extremely embarrassed if Moncada had proved untrust- 
worthy, for he had no authority to pledge his Government to 
virtual war in Nicaragua ; but he followed his policy of trust 
and good will, and Moncada was as good as his word. He and 
most of his chieftains accepted the "Peace of Tipitapa," and 
the bulk of the armies on both sides turned in their weapons 
to the marines. Only one held out, a man named Sandino who 



AS PRIVATE CITIZEN 115 

had a long record as a bandit leader in Mexico. Sandino's 
plainly unprincipled and brutal activities attracted an aston- 
ishing amount of uncritical support both in Latin America 
and in the United States, but his operations were confined to a 
small and sparsely settled area. 

Thus within a month of his arrival Stimson had succeeded in 
restoring general peace. He had also pledged the United States 
to a fair and free election, and only the redemption of this 
pledge could mark a real ending point to his efforts. After his 
return to the United States he did much work in the prepara- 
tions for the 1928 elections and was in constant touch with the 
officer who supervised them, his friend General Frank R. Mc- 
Coy. Both men bore in mind the vital importance of keeping 
full control of the voting machinery, and McCoy organized an 
election of complete probity, in which a full and secret suffrage 
was maintained. To Stimson's personal satisfaction the Liberal 
Moncada was elected President. Thus the United States, at 
some expense and with considerable effort, succeeded in this 
one war in substituting ballots for bullets. And the warmth 
of Stimson's reception, after the settlement and before his de- 
parture, among all sorts of Nicaraguans clearly indicated to 
him that, at least among the people most closely concerned, 
he was regarded as a good and useful friend. 

There is much more to the story of American dealings with 
Nicaragua. It need not be supposed that one or two free and 
honest elections wholly changed the political conditions and 
attitudes of that small country, or that the end of civil war 
brought any quick solution to the problems of poverty and 
backwardness which have plagued the country for so long. 
Nor did the American Government quickly find any easy way 
to combine its respect for the sovereignty of small nations 
with its overriding concern for the strategic security of the 
Panama area. But during the years in which Stimson followed 
it closely the story of American-Nicaraguan relations was con- 
stantly more hopeful, and one of his last official acts as 
Secretary of State in early 1933 was to approve the with- 
drawal on schedule of the last American marines. The marines 
had come to save lives in the civil war ; they had remained to 
disarm the contenders, chase bandits, and hold an election. 



u6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and they left behind in the end a country peaceful and in- 
dependent. It was a job well done. 

To Stimson himself the big lesson of his Nicaraguan ex- 
perience was a simple one : if a man was frank and friendly, 
and if he treated them as the equals they most certainly were, 
he could talk turkey with the politicians and other leaders 
of Latin America as he could with his own American col- 
leagues. And they would not let him down. 

It happened that the Peace of Tipitapa and the transatlantic 
flight of Charles E. Lindbergh took place within a few days 
of each other, and Stimson always felt that his work in 
Nicaragua was somewhat blanketed from the public by the 
extraordinary and consuming interest attaching to Colonel 
Lindbergh. But in the Coolidge administration, and partic- 
ularly at the White House, where the Nicaraguan troubles 
had been a severe annoyance, his work was highly approved 
and his pledges fully redeemed. Calvin Coolidge was pleased, 
and his satisfaction was probably largely responsible for Stim- 
son's return in less than a year to full-time public service as 
Governor General of the Philippine Islands. 



CHAPTER VI 

Governor General of the Philippines 

I. THE BACKGROUND 

EARLY in February, 1928, Stimson sailed from San 
Francisco to begin service as Governor General of the 
Philippine Islands. He had retired for good from his law 
firm, and now he was embarked with Mrs. Stimson on a 
journey halfway around the world. It was a strange under- 
taking for a sixty-year-old New York lawyer, and during the 
preceding month he had been kept busy acknowledging let- 
ters in which congratulations were tempered by a certain tone 
of condolence, as if to say that this was all very well but did 
he know what he was letting himself in for? Only a few recog- 
nized the feeling with which Stimson himself had accepted 
the appointment a feeling that this was to be a last short ad- 
venture before his old age, and that it would be a welcome 
addition to his memories. The Philippines to most Americans 
were still, in 1928, a far-off unhealthy country, in which one 
might take a distant, not unkindly interest but to which one 
would hardly go as a working official. And, indeed, if the 
appointment to the Philippines had been merely a routine 
call to public service, Stimson might well have refused, for 
life at home had become increasingly satisfactory in the years 
since the war, and Stimson was not insensible to the dangers 
and difficulties of so great a change in his life. But as it hap- 
pened, his interest in the Philippines was intense, and he 
believed that there was offered to him now an unusual oppor- 
tunity for special service. In order to understand his position, 
we must briefly consider the history of the Philippine Islands. 
The Philippine Islands were named by the Spanish explorer 

117 



n8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Villabos in 1543 ; they were conquered by Spaniards a genera- 
tion later and for more than three centuries remained under 
the Spanish flag. Then in 1898, by the historical accident that 
Spain had also kept Cuba, the Philippines passed to American 
control. The American reaction to this quirk of fate was 
mixed, but the resulting official policy was, in Stimson's view, 
excellent. As he later wrote, "What we proposed to do was 
stated with wisdom and foresight by our Senate in its resolu- 
tion of February 14, 1899, when we ratified the treaty with 
Spain and took over the Islands. 'Resolved that by the ratifica- 
tion of the treaty of peace with Spain it is not intended to 
permanently annex said islands as an integral part of the 
United States; but it is the" intention of the United States to 
establish on said islands a government suitable to the wants 
and conditions of the inhabitants of said islands, to prepare 
them for local self-government, and in due time to make 
such disposition of said islands as will best promote the in- 
terests of the citizens of the United States and the inhabitants 
of said islands.' m This general policy was defined in greater 
detail in the famous letter of instructions to William H. Taft 
which was prepared by Secretary Root and signed by Presi- 
dent McKinley on April 7, 1900. This letter outlined in some 
detail the great principles of individual human rights "which 
we deem essential to the rule of freedom." It instructed Taft's 
commission to insure the maintenance of these principles at 
all costs, bearing in mind, however, "that the government 
which they are establishing is designed, not for our satisfac- 
tion or the expression of our theoretical views, but for the 
happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philip- 
pine Islands, and the measures adopted shall be made to con- 
form to their customs, their habits, and even to their prejudices, 
to the fullest extent consistent with the accomplishment of 
the indispensable requisite of just and effective government." 2 
The policy of McKinley and Root was carried out with un- 
wearied devotion and sympathy by Taft and his successors 
for thirteen years. The great political objective of this period 
was to educate the Filipinos to a constantly growing measure 

1 "Future Philippine Policy under the Jones Act," foreign Affairs, April, 1927. 

2 Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1900, p. 74. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 119 

of democratic self-government, and after the mutually mag- 
nanimous conclusion of the Philippine insurrection, in 1902, 
the progress made in pursuing this objective was remarkable. 
Perhaps no group of white men has ever accomplished so 
much with a colonial people as the American officials, educa- 
tors, and missionaries who went to the Philippines in the 
early twentieth century. Taft's dictum that the Philippines 
were for the Filipinos became and remained the fixed policy 
of the American authorities, and the small colony of Western 
businessmen in Manila never found the Governors General 
willing to subordinate their mission to commercial interests. 

This political policy was gradually matched by economic 
concessions culminating in 1913 with the establishment of com- 
plete free trade between the Islands and the United States. 
Not until later did the profound significance of this step be- 
come fully apparent. 

In 1913 the Philippines enjoyed a measure of prosperity 
and health incomparably greater than any they had dreamed 
of fifteen years before. In thousands of schoolhouses an effort 
had begun to satisfy the deep thirst of the Filipino people for 
education. The health and sanitation of the tropical islands 
had been greatly improved conspicuously, the death rate in 
Manila had been cut in half. An equitable system of justice 
was in full operation. A constantly growing number of Fili- 
pinos were participating in the work of government, both 
legislative and administrative, though the final authority in 
the Islands remained the American Governor General. The 
Americans and the Filipinos had become fast friends. 

But though much had been done, a great deal more re- 
mained to do, and, as Secretary of War, in 1912, writing with 
the knowledge that a new administration was about to take 
office, Stimson issued a strong warning against any change in 
policy. This warning must be quoted in detail, for it repre- 
sents very clearly the peculiar difficulty of the American mis 7 
sion to the Philippines as Stimson understood it. 

"All this has made for the betterment of the condition and 
the hopefulness of the outlook of the individual Filipino. Yet 
with all the progress of the decade, our work in the Phil- 
ippines has but just commenced. Along no line, moral, mental, 



120 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

or material, can it be counted as completed. With all the 
remarkable advance in education, there are still over a million 
Filipino children of school age unreached. With all that has 
been done in constructing public works, there are still vast 
regions of the islands cut off from means of communication 
and transportation and from facilities for moral and mental 
betterment. In spite of the higher wages and greater freedom 
now granted to labor, the old system of peonage, ingrained 
through centuries, is still accepted as their economic lot by 
the Philippine masses, and would make them only too ready 
victims for the rich and educated Philippine minority, who 
still regard the status of peonage as the natural lot of the 
ignorant masses. And, finally, the success of the constantly 
increasing native participation in the native government has 
been accomplished only because every step has been carefully 
checked and watched by Americans, and probably nothing is 
more certain than that, without these checks, such progress 
would have been impossible. Not only this, but the suspension 
of these checks now would, with almost equal certainty, forbid 
the eventual establishment of anything like popular self-gov- 
ernment in the Islands, and would subject the great mass of 
people there to the dominance of an oligarchy, and probably 
an exploiting oligarchy. A complete release from American 
direction would not merely retard progress along every line 
noted here, but would inevitably mark the beginning of a 
period of rapid retrogression. There are few competent stu- 
dents of recent Philippine affairs who do not believe that if 
American control were now removed from the Islands prac- 
tically all signs of American accomplishment in the Philip- 
pines during the last decade would disappear in the next 
generation. Until our work in the archipelago is completed, 
until the Filipinos are prepared not only to preserve but to 
continue it, abandonment of the Philippines, under whatever 
guise, would be an abandonment of our responsibility to the 
Filipino people and of the moral obligations which we have 
voluntarily assumed before the world." 

In the face of this warning, which very possibly they did 
not read, for it was embedded in the annual report of the 
Secretary of War, the policy makers of the Wilson administra- 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE 'PHILIPPINES 121 

tion promptly undertook to execute a program of rapid with- 
drawal. In this they were carrying out a part of their national 
platform; they were also in harmony with the advice of lead- 
ing Filipinos. The Democratic party, partly on partisan 
grounds and partly in the conviction that there could be no 
such thing as truly disinterested colonial government, had 
steadily urged in years of opposition that the United States 
should get out of the Philippines as quickly as possible. Mean- 
while political leaders in the Islands had raised the standard 
of independence, and their cries were heard with sympathy 
by many generous-spirited Americans who had more knowl- 
edge of the ideals of freedom than of the political realities 
of the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson, succeeding to the Presi- 
dency in 1913, was not only a Democrat but a man whose igno- 
rance of the Philippines was fully matched by a doctrinaire 
sympathy with brave words everywhere. 

It thus happened that between 1913 and 1921, in a period 
which Stimson wryly called "the Harrison interlude," the 
Republican policy of slowly expanding self-government under 
American supervision was abandoned in favor of a policy of 
rapid "Filipinization," accompanied by an astonishing abdi- 
cation of the Governor General's supervisory and executive 
functions. The Governor General, Francis Burton Harrison, 
succeeded in permanently disbanding the experienced and 
disinterested cadre of American officials which had played 
so great a part in raising and maintaining high standards of 
civil service in the Philippines; Harrison went so far as 
to turn over to the Filipinos powers specifically reserved to 
the Governor General by the Jones Act of 1916, a measure 
sponsored by his own party. 

The result of those eight years was the one which Stimson 
and Americans experienced in Philippine affairs had ex- 
pected. As Stimson later put it, "The Malay tendency to 
backslide promptly made itself felt with disastrous conse- 
quences. The sanitary service became disorganized with re- 
sulting epidemics of smallpox, and cholera, which within a 
single period of two years carried off over sixty thousand 
people. The Philippine government was allowed to invest its 
funds in a national bank, a railroad, cement factory, sugar 



122 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

centrals and other business enterprises substantially all of 
which were failures. The bank .nearly became insolvent, the 
insular currency dropped to fifteen percent below par and the 
insular government was wholly unable to live within its 



revenue." 3 



Shortly after his inauguration in 1921 President Harding 
sent to the Philippines a mission headed by Leonard Wood, 
with former Governor General Cameron Forbes as his chief 
associate. The Wood-Forbes mission was to report whether 
or not "the Philippine Government is now in a position to 
warrant its total separation from the United States Govern- 
ment." The mission's report, though moderate in tone, made 
clear the opinion of the mission that the Philippines were not 
yet ready for unsupervised self-government. It drew particular 
attention to the condition of the public service. "It is the 
general opinion among Filipinos, Americans, and foreigners 
that the public services are now in many particulars relatively 
inefficient ; that there has occurred a slowing down in the dis- 
patch of business, and a distinct relapse toward the standards 
and administrative habits of former days. This is due in part 
to bad example, incompetent direction, to political infection 
of the services, and above all to lack of competent supervision 
and inspection. This has been brought about by surrendering, 
or failing to employ, the executive authority of the Governor 
General, and has resulted in undue interference and tacit 
usurpation by the political leaders of the general supervision 
and control of departments and bureaus of the government 
vested by law in the Governor General." 4 

Challenged by the condition he had found, General Wood 
accepted appointment as Governor General, and during the 
next six years he did his best to restore the earlier high stand- 
ards of administration in the Islands. "Such a restoration," 
Stimson reported, "necessarily could be only partial. The 
'Big Brother' method was gone forever as the admirable force 
of American civil servants who had been brought to the Phil- 
ippines by Governor Taft and his successors during the first 

"Future Philippine Policy under the Jones Act," Foreign Affairs, April, 1927. 

Report of the Special Mission to the Philippine Islands, printed as House Docu- 
ment No. 325, 67th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 22-23. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 123 

fifteen years had been dismissed and scattered. But, under the 
broad powers of supervision and veto granted to the Governor 
General by Congress in the Jones Act of 1916, Governor Wood 
has found an instrument for the gradual rehabilitation of the 
Philippine government. It has been a most difficult and un- 
grateful task. Powers of supervision over any race or people 
once abandoned can be re-established only with the utmost 
difficulty. To any governor not possessing the titanic energy 
as well as the colonial experience and unfailing patience of 
Leonard Wood, the task would have been impossible, for in 
the Philippines this supervisory power of the Governor Gen- 
eral must take the place and perform the duty w r hich in Amer- 
ica is performed by organized public opinion. ... By the 
work thus patiently and laboriously performed the damage 
done by the reckless experiment of the Harrison administra- 
tion has been practically repaired. The currency has been 
restored to par. The bank has been saved from insolvency. 
The government is living within its income. Taxation which 
is very moderate is being satisfactorily paid. Sanitation has 
been restored and w 7 hile eternal vigilance is necessary, that 
vigilance at present is being maintained. When an epidemic 
of Asiatic cholera was brought over from China to Manila in 
the autumn of 1925, it was promptly suppressed by the vigor- 
ous measures taken by Governor Wood. Education is highly 
popular and constitutes the largest item of the budget. There 
is in general throughout the Islands a very evident condition 
of ease and contentment which strikes the visitor at the present 
time as in the sharpest possible contrast with the conditions 
which he sees across the way in China.' 53 

Such w r as the outline of the American connection with the 
Philippine problem as Stimson understood it in 1926 when 
with his wife he visited General Wood in Manila. It was a 
visit which Wood had requested him to make for the purpose 
of obtaining his advice on some matters of a legal and govern- 
mental character and during the six weeks of his stay Stimson 
saw a great deal about the Philippines with which he had 
only distantly come in contact before. He was more than ever 

5 "First Hand Impressions of the Philippine Problem," Saturday Evening Post, 
March 19, 1927. 



124 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

gripped by the extraordinary educational venture on which 
the American Government was then embarked. He also found, 
with a shock of happy recognition, that the central political 
problem of the Philippines seemed to be one for which his 
own political thinking of the previous decade suggested an 
almost tailor-made solution. 

The labors performed by Leonard Wood in the Philippines 
had not won him the cordial support of Filipino politicians. 
The reassertion of powers left unused by his predecessor 
seemed to the Filipinos a clear backward step, and although 
they could not deny the existence of the abuses which Wood 
was working to correct, neither pride nor politics made it easy 
for them to accept his course with equanimity. Thus it hap- 
pened that during the Wood administration there had de- 
veloped an impasse, not between Wood and the Filipino peo- 
ple, who were largely indifferent to politics and as a whole 
respected and admired Wood's Herculean efforts on their be- 
half, but between Wood and the leaders of the elective legisla- 
ture. It became the declared policy of these leaders not to 
co-operate with the Governor General, and as their complaints 
carried more readily across the water to America than the 
solid facts about Wood's administration, there was the usual 
reaction among uncritical liberals at home. Fortunately Wood 
was firmly supported by President Coolidge, and by the time 
Stimson arrived on his visit to the Islands the Filipino leaders 
had begun to moderate their position. But the policy of non- 
co-operation still persisted, and the Cabinet remained unfilled 
because the Philippine Senate and the Governor could not 
agree on appointments. 

During his visit Stimson talked and traveled with Wood, 
observing with keen admiration the vigilance and energy with 
which the Governor looked after the interests of his people, 
using his powers of inspection as a constant goad to the lazy 
and a menace to the faithless. 

But he also talked with Filipinos, and particularly with 
Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena, the two who then shared 
leadership among the Filipino politicians. Quezon, whom he 
had known since 1913, was the particular symbol now of 
opposition to Wood's regime; he had raised with eloquence 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 125 

and vigor the standard of immediate independence. Yet in 
long talks with Quezon, Stimson became certain that the fiery 
Filipino was by no means unready to co-operate, under the 
Jones Act of 1916, so long as he could not have independence. 
He was even willing to suspend active discussion of inde- 
pendence in return for genuine co-operation in gradually ex- 
tending Filipino participation in the administration of the 
Government. Quezon was a politico, but Stimson found that 
in frank discussion he was both friendly and reasonable. 

Osmena he found even more interesting. The studious and 
highly intelligent Chinese mestizo, though less eloquent and 
vigorous than his half-Spanish colleague, had thought deeply 
on the government of the Philippines. On Osmena's home 
island of Cebu Stimson discussed with him at length the no- 
tion both men had developed that the solution to the current 
impasse might lie in an adaptation of Cabinet government. 
Osmena emphasized the importance of co-operation with the 
legislature, while Stimson put his stress on the final respon- 
sibility of the Governor General in major matters, but each 
recognized the validity of the other's position, and when they 
parted both believed that effective co-operation could be 
achieved on these general terms. 

These conversations with Filipino leaders culminated in 
a meeting on September 9, 1926, in which Stimson presented 
a memorandum of his suggestions to Quezon, Osmena, and 
Manuel Roxas in the presence of Governor General Wood. 
In this memorandum he developed in detail a scheme for 
combining effective executive authority with the beginnings 
of responsible Cabinet government. He pointed out that such 
a plan would require a frank recognition by the Filipinos of 
the American Governor's executive powers under the organic 
law. It was exactly this recognition which had hitherto been 
denied to General Wood. At the same time Stimson pointed 
out that the powers vested in the legislature under the Organic 
Act made it essential for the two branches to co-operate and, 
as the best means to this end, he urged that Cabinet appoint- 
ments by the Governor should be drawn from the party 
dominant in the legislature. The memorandum further em- 
phasized certain powers which must be reserved to the Gov- 



ia6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ernor and concluded: "If this whole program is tried, it must 
be first broached without any attempt by either side to boast 
of a victory over the other. The only chance of its success 
would be from both sides treating it as a fresh start in a sincere 
effort of co-operation between American and Filipino repre- 
sentatives." 

But a fresh start was exactly what could not be expected of 
either Filipinos or Americans under the administration of 
General Wood. Both sides, and in Stimson's opinion the Amer- 
icans more justifiably, were keenly aware of what they con- 
sidered the bad faith and unsympathetic attitudes of the other. 
And General Wood was by no means disposed to accept what 
he considered the alien principle of Cabinet government, no 
matter what restrictions might be admitted by its advocates. 
Stimson left the Philippines with the deadlock unbroken but 
without finding any reason to change his opinion that there re- 
mained only personal reasons for its existence. 

In public statements both in the Philippines and after his 
return to the United States, Stimson frankly stated his general 
views on the Philippine situation. In the Philippines, acting 
to support his friend Wood, he strongly defended the Wood 
administration against wild charges of militarism and laid the 
responsibility for non-co-operation squarely on the Filipino 
leaders. In his statements in the United States he dealt first 
with the general question of independence, basing his strong 
opposition on two general grounds. First, he held that the 
Philippines without American protection must certainly be- 
come a prey to one or another of the expanding and over- 
populated nations in the Far East. Second, and this was the 
point that was more dear to him although the one less pal- 
atable to Filipino leaders, he argued that the American re- 
sponsibility within the Philippines would not be fully dis- 
charged until there had been widely established in the Islands 
the attitudes of mind which would permit the unsupervised 
survival of free democratic institutions. 

So far from finding hope of progress in the idea of in- 
dependence, Stimson argued that discussion of this issue was 
indeed a serious obstacle to effective political development in 
the Islands and urged that the United States adopt a fixed 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 127 

policy of maintaining its responsibility in the Philippines 
while aiming at increasng self-government and ever closer 
co-operation between the Filipino and American peoples. 

In the summer of 1927, having returned to the United States 
for a badly needed rest. General Wood finally consented to a 
long-deferred operation and died on the operating table, the 
victim of his own tenacious courage. Later in the year, while 
President Coolidge was still considering his choice of a new 
Governor General, Quezon and Osmena came to the United 
States to give their advice in the matter. At the end of Novem- 
ber they called on Stimson in New York and strongly urged 
him to accept appointment as the next Governor. That these 
two leaders should make such a plea to such a man at such a 
time was remarkable. In his public statements and in his 
private conversations Stimson had never concealed three opin- 
ions which Filipino leaders could hardly be expected to ap- 
prove. As part of his conviction that the Philippines were not 
ready for independence, he had emphasized "the Malay ten- 
dency to backslide" ; he had warned that political leadership 
in the Islands was confined to a small group of educated 
mestizos, who might be expected, if the Islands were turned 
loose, to govern as an undemocratic oligarchy with small re- 
gard for the interests of the great farming masses ; finally, he 
had constantly and vigorously asserted the absolute present 
necessity of retaining final authority in the hands of an Amer- 
ican Governor General. All of these views were well known 
to Quezon and Osmena, and yet they promised that if he 
should come as Governor General he could be assured of their 
energetic co-operation, and "when I suggested that such co- 
operation must involve no surrender of American principle, 
they cordially accepted that limitation." 6 

The position then taken by Quezon and Osmena, and loyally 
maintained by them afterwards, could only be explained in 
terms of their willingness to accept at face value Stimson's 
assurances that his position, like that of McKinley, Root, Taft, 

6 Annual Report of the Governor General of the Philippine Islands, 1928, printed 
as House Document No. 133, yist Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2; hereafter in this 
chapter this document is called simply "Report. 51 



128 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Forbes, and Wood, was based primarily on a genuine concern 
for the interests of the Filipino people and no one else. It 
was this basic Filipino trust in American colonial policy that 
made the relations of the United States in the Philippines 
different from those of any other colonial power with any 
other subject people; and although in their more explosive 
moments Filipino leaders were capable of vigorous anti-Amer- 
ican statements, neither to their own people nor. to Americans 
familiar with the Islands were these statements ever so sig- 
nificant as the basic friendliness "which belied them. There 
can be no understanding of the history of American possession 
of the Philippine Islands without an appreciation of this fun- 
damental fact. 

With the assurance of support from the two outstanding 
Filipino leaders of the day, Stimson in due course accepted 
President Coolidge's offer of appointment as Governor Gen- 
eral ; for he saw every reason to hope that he might become a 
leading instrument in the realization of the brave hope for 
a co-operative advance toward self-government which he had 
outlined a year before. It was an opportunity too great to be 
missed. 

2. A HAPPY YEAR 

When the new Governor General and Mrs. Stimson dis- 
embarked in Manila on the first of March, 1928, they entered 
a world so different from the one they had left that in retro- 
spect it often seemed to both of them that their year in the 
Philippines was a dream. The three thousand islands of the 
tropical archipelago offered a variety of strange scenic beauty 
that had already in their earlier visit caught their fascinated 
admiration. The eleven million people of many different races 
varied in their nature from the small pure-blooded Spanish 
colony in Manila to the primitive pagan tribes of the moun- 
tains. In the civilization of the Philippines could be found in 
wonderful admixture the effects of Malay inheritance, Moslem 
invasion, Spanish occupation, Christian conversion, and Amer- 
ican education. 

All this had been quite sufficiently exciting to the Stimsons 
when they came merely as visitors. Now as the Governor 
General and his lady they were to be the living symbols of 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 129 

the far-off supreme authority of the United States Govern- 
ment. Stimson was now to be the agent of the great republic 
and upon him would rest the final authority and the final 
responsibility for government. To eleven million people he 
was now representative of America and in his every move 
there would be judged not an individual but the whole of 
American colonial policy. 

And he was not merely representative. It had been the tra- 
dition since the days of Taft that Governors General in the 
Philippines should be left free by Washington to execute their 
own policies in their own way. President Coolidge, of all the 
Chief Executives whom Stimson served under, was the most 
firm in giving to his subordinates both freedom and full 
support. It was typical of the man to have suggested to Stim- 
son that if a letter of instructions was needed, Stimson should 
write it himself. There was no letter, and no order of any kind, 
except to do a good job. For Stimson Mr. Coolidge was a per- 
fect chief. 

The first task of the new Governor General was to make 
effective use of the "co-operation 1 ' which he had been prom- 
ised. On March 2 he talked privately for an hour and a half 
with Osmefia, the Acting President of the Senate, and Roxas, 
the Speaker of the House; Senate President Quezon was in 
the United States under treatment for tuberculosis. This con- 
versation was followed by another the following day, and 
during the weeks that followed, Osmefia and Roxas were 
frequent visitors at Malacanari Palace, the Philippine White 
House. 

Though the root of the problem of co-operation lay in atti- 
tudes and policies which have already been discussed, it is im- 
portant to understand the particular facts of the situation faced 
by Stimson and his Filipino leaders. Under the Jones Law, 
or Organic Act, of 1916, which had the same standing in 
Filipino law as the Constitution in the United States, the pow- 
ers of the Philippine Government were sharply divided into 
the traditional three areas of legislative, executive, and judi- 
cial power. The elected House and Senate 7 held a legislative 
authority differing from that of their American counterparts 

7 A few seats, less than 10 per cent, were filled by executive appointment to insure 
representation of the non-Christian tribes. 



i 3 o ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

only in that laws of certain kinds required the approval of the 
American President, while laws of any kind might be annulled 
by the American Congress. Neither of these powers was often 
used, although of course their existence had a substantial effect 
on the initiative of the Philippine legislature. The sig- 
nificant legislative authority of the Filipinos, however, rested 
less in their affirmative than in their negative prerogatives. By 
refusing confirmation to the nominees of the Governor Gen- 
eral, the Senate might seriously hamper his work, and both 
houses possessed the far broader power to refuse new legisla- 
tion or appropriations. Though somewhat limited by a pro- 
vision continuing the appropriations of the previous year 
whenever no appropriation bill should be passed, this control 
over the law and the purse strings effectively insured to the 
Filipinos a power of veto over all new projects of the Gover- 
nor General. And it would be wrong to suppose that the 
Governor General had any certain escape from this veto to 
the supreme authority of the American Congress, for in that 
body his recommendations would be balanced against those 
of the Filipinos and against other considerations more influ- 
ential than either. Generally speaking, both the Governor 
General and the Filipino leaders were well off when ignored 
by Congress. 

The executive power of the Philippine Government be- 
longed to the Governor General under the general supervision 
of the President of the United States. The provisions of the 
Jones Law on this point were complete and explicit, so much 
so that they had been particularly emphasized to Governor 
General Harrison by Secretary of War Baker at the time of 
the passage of the act. "All executive functions of the govern- 
ment must be directly under the Governor General or within 
one of the executive departments under the supervision and 
control of the Governors General," said the Act. This was the 
authority which had been partly discarded by Harrison and 
restored against opposition by Wood. 

The Supreme Court of the Philippines, subject to review 
by the United States Supreme Court, was granted judicial 
powers like those of its superior. A majority of the Court, in 
Stimson's time, were Americans, and the appointive power 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 131 

rested with the American President. Judges of lower courts 
were appointed by the Governor General i; by and with the 
advice and consent of the Philippine Senate/' 

But w r hile the final authority in the executive and judicial 
branches rested with Americans, it must be remembered that 
except at the very top, in the Governor General's office and in 
the insular Supreme Court, almost all of the officers of these 
branches were Filipinos. When Stimson arrived in Manila, 
only the Vice Governor (who was ex officio the Secretary of 
Public Instruction) and the Auditor, of his official family, 
were Americans. The men in charge of the remaining execu- 
tive departments were Filipinos, and their subordinates were 
Filipinos. The elected Governors of the provinces, except those 
mainly inhabited by the non-Christian tribes, were Filipinos. 
So were most of the judges of lower courts and a large minor- 
ity of the Supreme Court. 

There was thus no question of instituting or maintaining an 
administration of the Islands by Americans. The day-to-day 
administration now belonged to the Filipinos, and no Amer- 
ican could reverse this situation, even if he wanted to. Stimson 
had around him in 1928 and 1929 not more than half a dozen 
American assistants of any direct importance to him ; these men 
made up in energy and devotion much of what they lacked in 
numbers, but they were necessarily auxiliary agents, not leaders 
in their own right. 

Yet there persisted a natural fear among Filipinos that in 
the exercise of his indisputable final power the Governor Gen- 
eral might in effect nullify the Filipinization of the civil serv- 
ice and the executive departments, and it was one of the first 
fruits of Stimson's cordial relationship with Osmena and 
Roxas that he found a way to reassure the public on this point. 
Being informed by them that Filipinos were nervous about 
his intentions in dealing with his subordinates, he wrote and 
made public a letter denying one of the frequent requests he 
received for intervention. In the course of this letter he re- 
marked that "The Organic law, which forms the basic consti- 
tution of our government in the islands, certainly does not 
contemplate that I should substitute my own personal judg- 
ment for the official judgment of the various executive of- 



132 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ficers to whom by law the administration of such details . . . 
is intrusted in the conduct of the insular government. The 
great power of supervision and control over the executive 
functions of government which that Organic law imposes 
upon me should ordinarily not be invoked to interfere with 
the conduct of government by my subordinates, unless they 
have been guilty of some misconduct or negligence deserving 
of grave reprehension or even removal from office." 8 

Taken by itself, this letter would give an unbalanced view 
of Stimson's position. Like almost every aspect of his policy 
in the Philippines, the question was two-sided; if it would be 
usurpation to butt into the ordinary business of his subordi- 
nates, it would be faithless abdication not to maintain and 
exercise his duty of "supervision and control," and long before 
his arrival in the Philippines Stimson had made it clear that 
he favored action to enable the Governor General to carry 
out this duty more effectively. He had strongly urged the 
prompt enactment of a bill pending in Washington which 
would provide the Governor with technical advisers and in- 
vestigating assistants responsible directly to him and to him 
alone. This bill was opposed by Filipino leaders, who feared 
that it aimed at the substitution of Americans for Filipinos in 
the actual administration of the Islands, and who in any case 
did not notably share Stimson's enthusiasm for effective "super- 
vision and control." 

The solution of this problem on a mutually satisfactory 
basis was in Stimson's view one of the most striking successes 
of his year in the Philippines. While the Washington legisla- 
tion was still awaiting action, and after prolonged confer- 
ences and final agreement with Stimson, the Philippine legisla- 
ture itself passed in August a law (the Belo Act) providing 
the Governor General with the necessary money and author- 
ity for personal assistants, American or Filipino, and, as Stim- 
son remarked in a public statement, it did so "in a way to 
insure the permanence and non-partisan character of the 
provision quite as effectively as if it had been furnished by 
congressional action." For the act contained a permanent ap- 
propriation, any change in which would be subject to a guber- 

8 Report, Appendix A. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 133 

natorial veto. For his part, in the same statement Stimson made 
clear his intention not to interfere with the exercise of ad- 
ministrative duties by his Filipino officials. u The true purpose 
of the statute is just the opposite, namely, to develop the auton- 
omy of the heads of the departments by placing the Governor 
General in a position where he can safely intrust ever widen- 
ing powers of discretion to those department heads with the 
assurance that he will, nevertheless, be kept in touch with the 
progress of government and so provided with the informa- 
tion necessary for his action, under the Organic law, in cases 
of dereliction or neglect of duty on their part." 9 

Parallel with this clarification of the Governor General's 
position in the executive department was the even more im- 
portant work of establishing a clear working relationship with 
the legislature. Here again the question was two-sided. On 
the one hand, Stimson had no intention of violating the Jones 
Law by surrendering to the legislators his final responsibility, 
but at the same time he recognized the force of Quezon's con- 
tention that the legislative branch, which contained the active 
political leaders of the Filipino people, could hardly make 
progress toward self-government unless it were brought into 
close connection with the administrative work of government. 
Otherwise, under the Jones Law, its essential powers would 
be merely negative and sterile. 

In this problem, as in many others, the solution was made 
easier by the work of Leonard Wood. Under Harrison the 
Philippine legislature, reaching out for new authority and 
power, had established a number of government-owned cor- 
porations and had placed the voting power of these corpora- 
tions in the hands of a Board of Control in which the Gov- 
ernor General could be outvoted by his two colleagues, the 
President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. These 
corporations, which included the national bank, were a trans- 
parent device for evading the authority of the American execu- 
tive. Wood had abolished the Board of Control as a violation 
of the Jones Law, and when Stimson took office an appeal 
against his assumption of personal authority over the govern- 
ment-owned corporations was awaiting final judgment in the 

9 Public memorandum of August 8, 1928, Report, Appendix C. 



134 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

United States Supreme Court. The decision handed down on 
May 14 fully upheld Wood and reasserted in unmistakable 
terms the authority of the Governor General. Without any 
action of his own, therefore, and without the unpleasant duty 
of making a decision, Stimson found his authority strongly 
reinforced. The government-owned corporations had always 
been extremely interesting to Filipino politicians, and his un- 
disputed control of them placed him in a strong bargaining 
position. At the same time he could afford to be generous and 
make a co-operative gesture. "I let it be known that whereas 
I proposed to retain and exercise all the powers vested in me 
by the decision of the Supreme Court, I did not intend to 
make any immediate or radical change in the management of 
these corporations and would devote myself to a careful study 
of their requirements, and that in such action as I eventually 
took I would endeavor to carry out the legitimate purposes 
which the Filipinos had in mind in establishing these corpora- 
tions so far as that could be done without danger to their 
security or the violation of more fundamental policy." 10 

With his authority firmly established, and his determina- 
tion to maintain it clear, Stimson proceeded to take three steps, 
with the concurrence of the Filipino leaders, which estab- 
lished a working machinery for co-operation with the legisla- 
ture. A favorable opportunity for these moves was created by 
the insular elections in June. Although Stimson was disap- 
pointed at the absence of any "clear-cut normal insular issues 
between the two principal parties," there was one issue of 
major importance that of co-operation or non-co-operation 
with the new Governor General. "The result of this issue was 
fortunate for future co-operation. All of the candidates who 
raised it were defeated. . . ." u The Nationalista party, 
led by Quezon, Osmena, and Roxas, was returned with 
handsome majorities in both houses, and when the Eighth 
Philippine Legislature convened in July, the time was ripe 
for steps toward formalizing the co-operation which had thus 
far been maintained by constant conference between Stimson, 
Osmena, and Roxas. 

10 Report, p. 6. 
"Report, p. 5. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 135 

First, Stimson appointed a Cabinet from members of the 
Nationalista party, after discussing his nominees with the 
party's leaders. It will be remembered that the Islands had 
been without a Cabinet since Wood's acceptance of the resig- 
nations of all but one of his Cabinet in 1923. The re-establish- 
ment of that body, and the appointment of men who were of 
the same party as that which controlled the legislature, "was 
the principal and most direct step toward securing co-opera- 
tion between that body and the executive. It postulated that 
in the performance of their administrative duties they should 
be a loyal part of an independent executive and yet at the same 
time in constant touch with the legislature, and therefore sym- 
pathetic and responsive to the policies laid down by that body." 
And in Stimson's time that postulate was thoroughly sustained. 
"The Secretaries of departments became true and efficient 
constitutional advisers. ... I believe that the change wrought 
by their appointment was little short of revolutionary." 12 

In their conversations of 1926, both Stimson and Osmefia 
had mentioned with favor the possibility of appointing Cab- 
inet members from the legislature itself, and not merely from 
the party there dominant. But in 1928 certain legal doubts on 
both sides prevented such a step, and it therefore became neces- 
sary to find another method for the establishment of close 
relations between the members of the Cabinet and the legisla- 
tors. The solution found was the amendment of the rules of 
procedure of the two houses to permit to Cabinet members 
the privileges of the floor. A plan which Stimson had vainly 
urged in New York in 1915 thus came to life ten thousand 
miles away. 

The third step in the co-operative machinery, and to Filipi- 
nos the most important, was the re-establishment of the Coun- 
cil of State, another organization set up by Harrison and 
dismantled by Wood. The Council of State was a body con- 
sisting of the Governor General, his Cabinet, and the presid- 
ing officers and majority floor leaders of the two houses of the 
legislature. Stimson's Council, unlike Harrison's, was, by the 
terms of the order creating it, purely advisory. Stimson made 
this limitation entirely clear to the Filipino leaders before he 

^Report, pp. 7, 8. 



136 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

set it up ; he did not want them to have any great hopes which 
might later be jarred. He hoped that the Council of State, 
like the Cabinet, would lead to increasing participation by 
Filipinos in the work of government, but he could not permit 
any such development to undermine his basic powers, and 
particularly in the three fields of health, finance, and law and 
order he must retain an untrammeled jurisdiction. These 
reservations were not of serious present concern to the Fil- 
ipinos; as Osmena put it, the legal forms of the Council of 
State were unimportant, "its political function of co-operation 
being the important one." (Diary, March 20, 1928) 

It would be easy to misunderstand the meaning of these 
steps toward co-operative government, and there were a few 
in Manila who did so misunderstand them. On the one hand, 
Americans who had hoped for a "firmer" policy argued that 
the new Governor General was undoing the good work of 
General Wood. On the other hand, a few opposition Filipinos, 
as Quezon reported with some amusement to Stimson, took to 
"spreading around the story that I was the ablest and most 
dangerous Governor-General that was ever in the Islands, 
and that while I wore an ingratiating smile, I was engaged in 
destroying their liberties." (Diary, October 17, 1928) But the 
bulk of the Filipino press and public, along with the majority 
of Filipino politicians, were as cordial in their support of the 
new policy as Stimson's superiors in Washington. The Amer- 
ican public, too, was pleased, insofar as it considered the 
Philippine problem at all. Neither Filipinos nor Americans 
were disturbed by the theoretical incompatibility of keeping 
final authority while maintaining close co-operation with legis- 
lative leaders. In practice no such incompatibility existed. 

Probably Stimson's greatest asset in carrying out the above 
policy was that the Filipinos trusted him. He had gone out of 
his way to earn their trust, and he described the method he 
followed in some detail in his report to the President at the 
end of the year. "In view of misunderstandings of past years, 
I think it worth while to record certain features in detail for 
the benefit of American administrators who, like myself, may 
be without previous experience in the Orient. When I as- 
sumed office I was warned that the nature of the oriental was 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 137 

such that it would be dangerous for me to confer with them 
without the presence of American witnesses. I rejected this 
advice, feeling that it was better to trust and be betrayed than 
to make mutual confidence impossible. So far as I am aware, 
I was not betrayed in a single instance ; and the character of 
our conferences became such that I was frequently made the 
recipient of confidences by the Filipino leaders which proved 
of priceless value to my administration. Again, bearing in 
mind the responsibilities of leadership in political organiza- 
tions in the United States, I was very careful never to surprise 
the Filipino leaders of the party organizations with which I 
was dealing by an executive decision of any importance. In- 
stead I always conferred with them about it beforehand, giving 
them an opportunity to discuss it and, if finally decided on, to 
prepare their followers for its announcement. Furthermore, if 
possible the announcement of such a decision was always made 
as one in which they had participated or had suggested. In 
that way many an important executive policy, which inevi- 
tably would have been resented by Filipino public opinion had 
it been deemed to be sole act of an alien executive, was ac- 
cepted or welcomed as coming also from their own leaders. 
These precautions may seem trivial and self-evident, but in 
such a situation as exists in the Philippines I am satisfied that 
they are vital, and unless they are constantly borne in mind, 
misunderstandings and suspicions are inevitable." 13 

In Manuel Quezon's autobiography the effect of this 
policy is clearly described : "Of course we had our disagree- 
ments, but we discussed our differences of opinion with per- 
fect sincerity and frankness, and after the discussions were 
over there was never a bad taste in our mouths. It had been my 
wont after the departure of Governor-General Stimson to tell 
everyone of his American successors . . . that no representative 
of the United States in the Philippines had won my respect 
and even my personal affection more than did Governor-Gen- 
eral Stimson. This, I added, was due to the fact that he never 
left me in doubt as to what he had in mind whenever he ex- 
pressed his ideas on any subject. There was never any mental 
reservation whenever he talked to me, and he therefore made 

13 Report, pp. 2-3. 



138 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

me feel that he gave me his entire confidence exactly as he 
would have done it if I had been an American sitting at his 
council table as the senior member of his official family." 14 

The significant phrase in Quezon's comment is "exactly as 
... if I had been an American." Before his term as Governor 
General, Stimson had himself imperfectly understood the 
depth of racial feeling in the Philippines, and perhaps more 
important to his success there than any theory of co-operation 
was his early appreciation of the importance of avoiding even 
the appearance of racial snobbery. His conversations with 
Quezon and Osmeiia before taking office had made clear the 
importance of this matter, and he was thus forewarned. Arriv- 
ing in the Islands, he was shocked to find that among many 
Americans the early friendliness nourished by Taft and others 
had given way to an attitude more like that of the traditional 
hard-bitten commercial white men in the Far East. Finding 
that the church of his own denomination excluded Filipinos, 
Stimson angrily shifted his allegiance to the local Episcopali- 
ans, who were still carrying on the great work begun by 
Bishop Charles H. Brent a generation earlier. And with Mrs. 
Stimson's spirited help, he set out to demonstrate that Filipi- 
nos would be welcome at the social functions of the Palace. 
The results were prompt and overwhelming. When the Gov- 
ernor General and his lady demonstrated their ability to dance 
the Philippine rlgodon at their first ball, the newspapers were 
filled with flamboyant satisfaction, and Mrs. Stimson's per- 
sonal triumph was complete when she appeared in the tradi- 
tional evening dress of the Filipina three months later at a 
party given by the legislature for the Governor General. 
There was nothing difficult or dutiful about such gestures 
they were indeed very easy and pleasant. But their significance 
for Stimson's administration can hardly be overestimated. 
Late in the year of her residence, as she was walking through 
the Palace with a group of friends, among them Osmena, Mrs. 
Stimson was complimented on certain changes she had made 
in the decoration of the building. "Mrs. Stimson," said Os- 
mena, "the best improvement that you have made in the Pal- 

14 From The Good Fight by Manuel Luis Quezon. Copyright 1946, by: Aurora A. 
Quezon, Maria Aurora Quezon, Maria Zeneida Quezon, Manuel L. Quezon, Jr. 
Reprinted by permission of Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., publishers. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 139 

ace is that you have opened its doors again to the Filipinos." 
(Diary, February 21, 1929) 

The policy and technique of mutually confident co-opera- 
tion was in the main a political undertaking, and the purposes 
by which Stimson was guided were mainly political. But par- 
allel to the political program, and interlocked with it in his 
thinking, was an interest in the economic development of the 
Islands, and to many in the Philippines who were not deeply 
concerned with the relationship between the Governor Gen- 
eral and the Philippine legislature it appeared that the pri- 
mary interest and purpose of Governor Stimson was economic. 
Nor did Stimson object to this opinion. The economics of the 
Philippines were the principal subject of his major public ad- 
dresses throughout his term. If political theory was in the end 
more significant to him than economics, he himself empha- 
sized that his great goal of stable self-government was depend- 
ent on economic development. 

His basic position was stated in his inaugural address on 
March i. "Among the various matters which I deem impor- 
tant, I lay particular stress upon industrial and economic prog- 
ress. It has often seemed to me that sometimes in our insistence 
upon political development we overlook the importance of 
the economic foundations which must underlie it and upon 
which it necessarily rests. By some of us, industrial develop- 
ment has even been dreaded as if it were inconsistent with the 
liberties of a people. As a general proposition, I believe that 
no greater error could be made." The speaker continued with 
a recital of the development of political freedom in those na- 
tions which had developed a "middle artisan class," the indus- 
trial guild, and "in later days the trade union." Then Stimson 
emphasized that "The world has now reached a stage of prog- 
ress where government is expected to engage in activities for 
the social benefit or protection of the individual, all of which 
are expensive and require greater governmental revenues. . . . 
All of these services minister to the comfort and welfare of 
the individual citizens ; some of them, like education, directly 
conduce to his ability to govern himself. Some of them are 
particularly necessary in the tropics with its constant threat of 



140 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

epidemic disease. But they all cost money. ... To support 
them a community must possess the wealth which comes only 
with industrial development" 

And the passage ended with a flat assertion that political 
freedom and economic strength were inseparable. "In short, 
it is the simple truth not only that individual freedom and the 
practice of self-government are found to be most prevalent 
and firmly held in those communities and nations which have 
a highly developed system of industry and commerce as a 
foundation, but it is also true that only in such communities 
and nations can the average citizen attain the degree of indi- 
vidual comfort, education, and culture which modern civili- 
zation is coming to demand." 15 If he had been a phrasemaker, 
Stimson might well have used the slogan later developed by 
Wendell Willkie : "Only the productive can be strong, and 
only the strong can be free." 

Of itself, this doctrine was acceptable enough to the Fili- 
pinos, although not many of them seemed fully to grasp the 
connection between economics and politics; the attitude of 
leaders with whom he discussed his program was at first that 
economics was a harmless interest of the Governor's which 
they were quite willing to indulge. Their faces showed keen 
interest only as the conversation turned to such matters as the 
revival of the Council of State. And this apathetic attitude 
acquired an admixture of suspicion and fear when Stimson 
began to spell out the practical meaning of his interest in eco- 
nomic development 

For it was a necessary condition of economic growth in the 
Philippines that large quantities of foreign presumably 
American capital be attracted to the Islands. Without heavy 
new investment neither the industries nor the agriculture of the 
Philippines could produce on an expanded scale in competi- 
tion with other countries. And without revision of the Philip- 
pine corporation laws heavy new investment could not be ob- 
tained. Thus the program of the Governor General flew 
squarely in the face of the natural prejudices which the Fili- 
pinos shared with most colonial peoples. Hospitality to for- 
eign capital is not a popular policy in most such countries, and 

15 Report, Appendix E. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 141 

the inescapable logic which requires foreign investment as the 
preliminary to economic independence is often obscured by 
the equally inescapable logic by which uncontrolled foreign 
investment leads to economic slavery. Of nothing in his term 
as Governor General was Stimson more proud than of his suc- 
cess in winning Filipino approval of a more liberal corpora- 
tion law. 

His preparations were careful. Using the prestige of his 
own official utterances to emphasize the positive values of eco- 
nomic development, he at the same time firmly insisted that 
no laws or actions giving capital unfair advantages would ever 
command his support, and he was believed. The required leg- 
islation was prepared not in the Governor General's office but 
by a committee of "prominent and respected lawyers," both 
Filipino and American. The detailed economic position of the 
Islands and their need for capital was expounded in a separate 
report by a visiting American, Vice President Lyman P. 
Hammond of the Electric Bond & Share Company. Most im- 
portant of all, Stimson won the open and fighting support of 
Quezon, who returned from the United States in August. 
"After studying carefully the general principles involved in 
the legislation, he became convinced of their wisdom and 
threw himself heart and soul into the leadership of the legisla- 
tive contest." Since the support of Quezon could hardly have 
been obtained without the previous establishment of political 
co-operation, it is evident that the economic program was quite 
as dependent on politics as politics on economic development. 

The corporation bills were not passed unamended. One of 
their outstanding provisions was the repeal of "certain enact- 
ments which forbade any investor to be interested in more than 
one agricultural corporation at a time." These enactments 
were a part of a deeply cherished Filipino land policy aimed 
at the prevention of great corporate land holdings. "The av- 
erage Filipino believes that it is better for his country to 
be slowly and gradually developed by a population of compar- 
atively small individual landowners than to be more rapidly 
exploited by a few large corporations which own the land and 
till it either with tenant farmers or hired employees." If for- 
eign investment could only be obtained by authorizing hold- 



i 4 2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Ing companies which would in effect nullify this land policy, 
he wanted no part of it. This feeling Stimson at first imper- 
fectly appreciated. But as he studied the problem he was 
largely converted to the Filipino position. "The existence of 
this native sentiment has not been generally recognized in the 
United States, but the events of my own year's experience 
brought it to my attention as one of the deepest and most con- 
trolling currents of public opinion in the Islands and one 
which it would be folly to disregard or attempt to defy." 1G 
The corporation bills, as finally passed, contained provisions 
designed to prevent holding companies from obtaining finan- 
cial control of the corporations in which they might invest, 
and Stimson pledged himself to vigilance in recommending 
further changes should they be necessary to protect the historic 
land policy of the Islands. And a few months later he officially 
discouraged a major American rubber company from under- 
taking any large-scale land purchases. 

The prolonged public debate over the corporation bills was 
in Stimson's view of great educational value. It directed the 
attention of the Filipinos toward the basic economic realities 
of their situation, and as by-products of the discussion a num- 
ber of less important but useful economic measures were 
passed by the legislature. A good beginning was thus made on 
a purpose which Stimson ranked far above any merely legisla- 
tive accomplishment, however necessary, namely, "to trans- 
form the attitude of the minds of the whole people on this 
subject so that they should recognize that such development 
might, if intelligently handled, be made an aid, and not an 
enemy, to their aspirations for freedom." 17 

Stimson had originally intended not to remain as Governor 
General more than a year, but as 1928 drew to an end, he 
found himself drawn more and more to a reconsideration of 
his original plan. His policies of economic development and 
political co-operation were fairly launched, but both of them 
still depended in considerable measure on his personal pres- 
tige ; neither could yet be called a solid tradition. The detailed 

16 Report, p. 4. 

17 Report, p. 9. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 143 

application of both was only beginning, and Stimson felt the 
urge of the successful builder not to leave his work at a time 
when it was progressing so favorably. More than that, he liked 
the life of the Governor General. The frequent trips of inspec- 
tion gave full rein to his hankering for travel and for sport, 
w T hile at the same time the viceroyal privileges of the Gover- 
nor were not unpleasant. Compared to the life of a practicing 
New York lawyer, it was not an unduly strenuous existence, 
and like most of his predecessors Stimson had been captivated 
by the unaffected trust and affection so freely granted 
by the Filipino people. The assignment thus combined a more 
agreeable life than the one he had left with very much greater 
opportunities for usefulness. But events in the United States 
intervened to prevent the gratification of his wish. Mr. Her- 
bert Hoover had been elected President and he desired Stim- 
son's presence in his Cabinet in a position far more important 
than that of Governor General of the Philippine Islands. At 
the end of January, 1929, Stimson accepted appointment as 
Mr. Hoover's Secretary of State, and a month later he sailed 
from Manila, never to return. His direct connection with the 
Philippine Islands thus came to an end just a year after his 
arrival in Manila. 

His last month in the Islands was at once one of the most 
active and one of the most satisfactory in Stimson's entire life. 
Against the background of his deep private happiness in the 
prospect of four years of service in the highest appointive of- 
fice in the American Government there unrolled a series of 
events which served to cement in lasting form his devoted af- 
fection for the Philippine Islands and their people. The news 
of his new assignment was greeted with enthusiasm by all sec- 
tions of Manila opinion; the press and political leaders vied 
with one another in expressions of their approval of his work 
and their good wishes for his future. In the legislature the 
prevalent good feeling took the practical form of rapid ap- 
proval in a special session (summoned by Stimson before his 
appointment) of a series of measures sponsored by the Gover- 
nor General. The legislature further took the unprecedented 
step of inviting the Governor to address it. In this, his last 
major public statement, Stimson paid his tribute to Quezon, 



144 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

Osmena, and Roxas "It has been my good fortune to have 
been in public life at different times and in different capacities 
and to have met with many men in public life in my own 
country. Never have I received more loyal friendship, more 
frank and fair treatment than I have received from the gentle- 
men who have been the heads of your two houses." He added 
similar and equally sincere words of praise for the legislature 
itself, and for his Cabinet "I will not admit that any Gover- 
nor General in the whole history of these Islands has ever had 
as good a Cabinet as I have now r ." Then he re-emphasized, to 
loud applause, his conviction that by traveling along the "path- 
way of economic development" the legislature was "traveling 
along the road which eventually leads to self-government and 
freedom." And he ended on a note of personal gratitude: 
"Now T , my friends, it is approaching the time when I must say 
farewell. I hate to say it. I came here as a stranger to a strange 
land, and I have found nothing but kindness and friendship. 
I have not even an uncomfortable memory of that wonderful 

year My wife and I have felt the \varmth of your affection 

and w r e value it more than I can say. I am not going to try to 
express it. I only wish to say in going that although I shall 
not be present w r ith you, I shall be your friend at home ; and 
I shall carry away memories which have caused me to feel 
the greatest possible obligation to the kindness of your people; 
and I shall not forget it." 

On March 3 Stimson sailed from Manila. "The Cabinet 
and Staff came with Quezon and Roxas to the Palace to say 
good-by and go w r ith us to the pier. Quezon brought a beauti- 
ful silk Governor General's flag made by Filipino ladies, and 
Roxas a beautiful but enormous Filipino flag also made of 
silk. . . . Manila certainly did its best to give us a warm send- 
off. A committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Torres had 
been appointed and a crowd had already assembled on the 
grounds of MalacaSan. All the whistles blew at two o'clock 
and again when the ship sailed at four. On our way to the pier 
the streets were lined with people. The University cadets were 
in one place and another corps of cadets at another place, 
while drawn up at the pier was a guard of honor consisting of 
the entire battalion of the 3131 Infantry of the American 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 145 

Army. At the pier itself, I should conservatively estimate the 
number of people assembled at ten thousand. They not only 
crowded the entrance but they crowded the entire length of 
the pier, which is about twelve hundred feet long. As we 
walked the length of the pier through the upper gallery, the 
entire way was lined with constabulary on each side keeping 
the way open but with* the people grouped on each side in rows 
two or three deep. When we got on board, a great many 
friends had been permitted to come on and say good-by to us 
there. The boat pulled out at four o'clock, and as it pulled out 
the entire pier, both upper and lower, was lined the entire 
length with friendly brown faces." (Diary, March 7, 1929) 

3. LATER DISAPPOINTMENTS AND SOME HOPES 

It would be pleasant if the story of Stimson's work in the 
Philippines could be ended with his triumphant departure 
from the Islands in 1929. It cannot. The foundation he laid 
in one year for the development of political and economic 
autonomy, based though it was on a precedent tradition of 
thirty years' standing, was in the main discarded in the years 
that followed. Conditions beyond his control and beyond 
the control of anyone in the Philippines, twisted the Philip- 
pine policy of the United States away from what Stimson had 
planned ; and the subsequent history of the Islands has not ful- 
filled the pleasant, peaceful, and progressive prospect that 
opened before both Filipinos and their American friends in 
1929. 

The first blow was struck by Americans ; the Philippine ex- 
periment may be regarded pridefully as an example of Amer- 
ican idealism at its practical best, but the end of that experi- 
ment was caused by American realism at its impractical worst 
It was a small and selfish group of American sugar interests 
that first disrupted the harmony of 1929. 

Warning of this attack came while Stimson was still in the 
Philippines, in the form of a resolution, introduced in Con- 
gress by a Representative Timberlake, which would have re- 
stricted the duty-free importation of Philippine sugar. Paral- 
lel to the Timberlake Resolution were a number of requests 



146 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

from American trade associations for tariff restrictions on 
other Philippine products. It thus appeared that American 
interests seeking tariff protection were determined on ending 
the free trade between the Philippines and the United States; 
these w 7 ere strong interests they were of the same sort as those 
which one year later produced the Hawley-Smoot tariff. 

The effect in the Philippines was immediate. Free trade 
with America had existed for fifteen years ; in that time insu- 
lar agriculture, the only large source of export value, had be- 
come entirely dependent on the American market. Without 
free trade the foundations of the Filipino economy would be 
destroyed, and the final result of the American connection 
with the Philippines would be disaster. In the face of such a 
danger it seemed idle to talk of economic development; to the 
degree that they saw the Timberlake Resolution as a straw in 
the wind, men hesitated to make new investments. The mere 
suggestion of a tariff barrier produced, in Stimson's words, a 
''withering effect" on business confidence. 

But even more serious was the withering of political co-op- 
eration. Filipino leaders continued to treat Stimson with full 
and friendly confidence; they knew that he was a vigorous 
opponent of tariff restriction. But Stimson was not America, 
and agitation for a tariff was painful evidence that Stimson's 
policy might not for long be American policy. The economic 
menace of the tariff restrictions thus reopened for urgent con- 
sideration among Filipinos the vexed issue of independence. 

Stimson, as we have seen, believed that complete independ- 
ence from the United States was the wrong final goal for the 
Philippines; he considered it impractical and unrealistic; he 
believed it neither useful for the Filipinos nor advantageous 
to the United States. The Filipinos, in his view, required 
American support and protection in order to avoid intimida- 
tion from large oriental neighbors, while America's political 
position in the Far East was greatly strengthened by the exist- 
ence in the Philippines of an outpost of American civilization. 
Independence he thought a misnomer for the legitimate and 
natural Filipino aspiration toward full self-government. 

In his inaugural address Governor General Stimson, like 
several of his predecessors, had withdrawn himself completely 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 147 

from any participation in discussion of independence. "It is 
not within the province of the Governor General to determine 
the future relations of the inhabitants of these islands to the 
United States; that duty rests with the government of the 
United States." 18 By giving the Filipino public the more con- 
crete and significant immediate goals of greater political 
autonomy and economic development, Stimson largely suc- 
ceeded in quieting the agitation for independence. Particularly 
significant was his success with Quezon, who came to recognize 
that Stimson's method of developing Cabinet government 
under the Jones Act would offer all the advantages of inde- 
pendence, without its danger. 

All this was changed by the tariff agitation in the United 
States. Stimson at first hoped that the terrible threat of a tariff 
barrier would dissuade Filipino leaders from their continued 
public support of "independence" ; talking with Quezon "I 
said that what I would fear was that when the dilemma was 
presented between tariff against the Philippines on one side 
and independence on the other, the American Congress remem- 
bering the long-continued demands for immediate independ- 
ence by the Filipinos would at the behest of the American 
special interests give the Filipinos immediate independence 
and disregard the real harm and cruelty which this would 
do to them." (Diary, January 6, 1929) 

Quezon's first reaction was most surprising and very satis- 
factory to his friend. "He agreed with me that this was the 
chief danger and said, and this was the most keenly significant 
thing that he said, 'If I could get a dominion government with 
free trade advantages, I would do so at the price of giving up 
all agitation for independence for thirty years and would not 
hesitate for a moment. By dominion government I do not 
mean all of the things which a dominion contains which are 
unfair to the mother country. England has given Canada 
many things which are highly unfair to England. I don't ask 
for those, but if we could get the dominion system, even with- 
out those, I would abandon the agitation for independence for 
thirty years.' " (Diary, January 6, 1929) 

But Quezon was not able to hold to this position. The strong 

18 Report, Appendix E. 



i 4 8 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

general reaction of Filipino opinion was directly opposite to 
Stimson's argument. Ten days later Quezon reported that he 
had been talking with Filipino businessmen, individuals cer- 
tain to be damaged by any tariff law. "The consensus of their 
attitude was 'If we are going to be subject to this kind of at- 
tack on our free trade, such as is now going on in the United 
States, we will be in constant uncertainty and danger. Even if 
we defeat it now, no Congress can bind its successor and the 
attack will be renewed. We might as well end it entirely and 
build up a separate system." (Diary, January 16, 1929) And 
the following day Quezon reported on the feelings of the poli- 
ticians; he had consulted legislative leaders and the entire 
Cabinet; 'The unanimous opinion expressed w T as that if they 
had to choose between free trade and independence, they 
would take independence." (Diary, January 17, 1929) It \vas 
wholly clear that the Filipinos had reacted with angry pride 
to what they considered a blow below the belt. Quezon said 
that "He did not think you could keep the Filipinos from agi- 
tation if the tariff threat were continued. He said that if they 
had been under any ordinary Governor General, we would 
have been flooded already with resolutions for immediate in- 
dependence from every municipality and barrio in the Is- 
lands. 7 ' With his usual courage Quezon was trying for the time 
being c: to sit on the agitation," but it was a very hot seat. 

In his first fifteen months as Secretary of State, Stimson 
went three times to Capitol Hill to testify on the Philippines. 
Twice he won his point. In April, 1929, he made a strong ap- 
peal against the Timberlake Resolution. In October of the 
same year he spoke against a bill which would have extended 
American coastwise shipping restrictions to Philippine waters. 
In both cases he was sympathetically heard ; in both cases the 
press supported the free-trade position, and the advocates of 
restriction were beaten. The third time was different. "The 
opponents of Philippine imports being defeated thus twice in 
direct attacks lined up behind the independence movement 
and my next skirmish w r ith them was before the Senate Com- 
mittee on Insular Affairs. . . . There I had a hopeless fight be- 
cause that committee was already committed by a large ma- 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 149 

jority to Philippine independence/' (Diary, August 28, 1930) 
Stimson repeated to the committee all the convictions which 
we have discussed above but it was an unpleasant session. As 
the months passed congressional sentiment for independence 
constantly increased, and Stimson was particularly saddened 
by the way in which the advocates of independence pushed the 
Filipino leaders into a corner. "The selfish interests which 
w T ant to get rid of the Philippines so as to get rid of their com- 
petition . . . have got evidently a majority in both houses [of 
Congress] pretty well pledged for that. The poor Filipinos 
themselves have at last realized their danger and are almost 
pathetic in their desire to escape, but of course they are tied 
hand and foot by their previous slogans and they do not dare 
to change for fear of political death in the Islands/ 7 (Diary, 
February 10, 1932) In the spring of 1931, Stimson was party 
to a final effort to kill the slogan value of independence by 
substituting a program of responsible Cabinet government 
under the Jones Act. In this move he had the support of Que- 
zon and the War Department, and the devoted and diplomatic 
assistance of Frank McCoy, but the effort failed. Neither 
President Hoover nor Governor General Davis really ap- 
proved the idea, and Quezon was soon driven by circumstances 
back to the idea of independence. To Stimson one of the most 
disheartening aspects of the situation was the number of Amer- 
icans schooled in the old tradition who now threw up their 
hands and came out in favor of early independence. Even 
former Governor General Forbes was among those who ad- 
vised Mr. Hoover to sign the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act of 
1933, which was passed \vith a \vhoop over his courageous 
veto. As Stimson had often prophesied to Quezon and Osmena, 
the independence movement in the end persuaded even the 
good friends of the Filipinos that American protection should 
be ended. 

The Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act had the one redeeming fea- 
ture that it was subject to Filipino approval, and by the stren- 
uous effort of Quezon that approval was denied. But protected 
by their "generosity 1 ' in offering independence, the tariff in- 
terests were now too strong to be completely beaten, and in 
1934 Quezon accepted the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which was 



i 5 o OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

only slightly modified from its predecessor. Under this act, in 
1935, the Philippines Commonwealth Government was estab- 
lished, and the Islands were to become independent in 1946, 
when they would be faced with the full effect of the American 
tariff wall. 

It is fortunate for the honor of the United States that the 
story does not end here. The tariff provisions of the Tydings- 
McDuffie Act were modified a few years later, to permit a pro- 
gressive imposition of the deadly barrier over a period of 
twenty years, in the hope that this might give the Filipinos 
time to develop new markets. And before 1946 arrived, Phil- 
ippine-American relations were subjected to a sterner test than 
any in their previous association. 

Already in 1935 Filipino leaders were aware that in achiev- 
ing independence they had achieved too much, even aside 
from economic questions. In that year Stimson heard reports 
both from Quezon and from Governor General Murphy about 
the rising fear of Japanese penetration. Both Murphy and 
Quezon talked in terms of a "permanent association" between 
the Philippines and the United States, and Stimson wholly 
agreed when Murphy emphasized that such a connection must 
be voluntary on both sides. In his personal opposition to inde- 
pendence he had always insisted that no American could or 
should stop the Filipinos if their mature judgment was in 
favor of independence; all he had argued was that the United 
States must so conduct itself as to give that mature judgment 
a full and fair opportunity. His favorite phrase was that the 
time for cave-man methods had ended and that any permanent 
marriage between the Philippines and the United States must 
be based on mutual consent. As fear of Japanese expansion in- 
creased, it became more and more clear that the Filipinos 
wanted what Stimson had always told them they wanted not 
independence, but self-government under American protec- 
tion. 

When war came, in 1941, and the Filipino people had to 
choose between Japanese promises and American reality, the 
American experiment in the Philippines was triumphantly 
vindicated. In 1941 Stimson was again Secretary of War, and 
his part in the epic of Bataan and Corregidor will be found 



GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES 151 

in a later chapter. After that campaign, during the years of 
the Philippine Government's exile, he was in constant contact 
with his old friends Quezon and Osmena, and Philippine 
problems came to his attention as a sort of "counsel for the 
situation," although the War Department was no longer 
charged with the responsibility for the Islands. The war 
served to end discussion of the tired issues of the past. Both 
sides had come to realize that there must be a continuing con- 
nection between the two nations, and both knew too that the 
old days of paternal Governors General could not be brought 
back. And the \var served a great purpose in reviving the in- 
terest of the American people ; as they watched with admira- 
tion the loyal resistance of the Filipinos, and compared it 
to the behavior of other colonial peoples, they realized that 
their agents had done well, and the economic legislation 
passed after the war, while far from perfect, was very much 
better than the original Tydings-McDuffie Act. 

On July 4, 1946, in accordance with plan, the Philippine 
Republic was established. For Stimson it was a date marked 
by both fear and hope. The fears were old ones. Could the 
Filipinos govern themselves, insuring to themselves the peace 
and individual liberty which had been enforced so long from 
above? Would the politicos be able to give honest, democratic 
government to a nation which had been so short a time ex- 
posed to democratic doctrine? Might they not slide back down 
the hard road up which they had been led, lacking the experi- 
ence and self-discipline for full self-government? Could they 
achieve alone the economic growth on which free government 
must depend? And Stimson had his fears for the United States 
also. Would she firmly maintain her duty to defend and protect 
the Philippines? Would her citizens continue to recognize 
their responsibility for Philippine prosperity and force a 
lowering of tariff barriers if that should be found necessary? 
Would able Americans respond to the continuing challenge 
of the Islands, and go as counselors, expert advisors, and assist- 
ants when the call came through, as it would surely do? 

Stimson's hopes were simple. For nearly fifty years, some- 
times in perfect harmony, more often with natural difficulties, 
Filipinos and Americans had lived together. In this common 



152 OX -ACTIVE SERVICE 

experience he had shared enough to know that with all its 
human failings, it was greatly to the credit of both peoples. 
The establishment of Philippine independence changed the 
setting for that old connection, and in settling old difficulties 
it raised new ones. But the sovereign remedy was still the same 
trust and friendship on both sides. It was one of the greatest 
satisfactions of his life that he had been able to give and re- 
ceive, in peace and war, such trust and friendship with the 
Filipino people, and he hoped that other Americans might 
have a similar satisfaction in the future. 



PART TWO 
WITH SPEARS OF STRAW 



CHAPTER VII 

Constructive Beginnings 



I. WASHIXGTOX IX 1929 

IT DID not seem fitting for the Governor General of the 
Philippines to take any active part in American politics, 
and during his year in Manila Stimson was more remote 
than ever from the Republican activities from which he had 
withdrawn in 1920. There were Republicans and Democrats 
in the Philippines, of course, but their interests were mainly 
insular they tried to get promises from both parties as to 
Philippine affairs. The great issue of the 1928 campaign was 
of little moment to men in the Philippines, for there was no 
prohibition in Manila. Stimson was pleased by the nomination 
of Herbert Hoover in June, and delighted by his election in 
November. His admiration and affection for Al Smith did 
not extend to Smith's party. But it did not occur to him that 
the election might concern him personally, except in that Smith 
would have returned him, cordially but firmly, to private life, 
while Hoover might let him continue his experiment in re- 
sponsible government. 

He was therefore astonished to learn through a cable from 
his partner George Roberts, on January 26, 1929, that the 
President-elect wished to know his feelings about possible ap- 
pointment in the new Cabinet, perhaps as Attorney General, 
perhaps as Secretary of State. After taking counsel, as always, 
with Mrs. Stimson he replied that he thought "Hoover should 
carefully consider" the dangers of withdrawing him from 
Manila at a time when tariff agitation had seriously disturbed 
public opinion in the Philippines. He continued, "If after such 
consideration he should offer me the State Department, would 

155 



1 56 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

accept. Would not care to accept Justice, for as you know my 
interest in legal problems is not so great as twenty years ago/' 
In this refusal to become Attorney General he persisted in the 
face of a warning from Roberts that Mr. Hoover might not 
like so blunt an answer. "You may soften my expression but 
my refusal must be shown to be absolute. It would be wiser 
for me to go into private life than accept Justice. It requires 
keen interest in the new problems of a great Department to 
furnish the driving power necessary to make good. I think 
that I would have that in the State Department, for I have 
been thinking about similar problems. In the other Depart- 
ment such tastes and sympathies would be almost entirely lack- 
ing. You must have no misunderstanding with Hoover. He is 
very determined and almost quarreled with me in 1917 when 
he urged me to become his counsel as Food Director, although 
I well knew that after my advocacy of the War, I must fight 
as combatant or lose my self-respect. It would augur ill for 
our future association if I began by not speaking frankly now." 
Mr. Hoover did not resent definite answers, and on January 
30 Stimson received word that the President-elect had decided 
to make him Secretary of State. During the next four years 
Stimson and Mr. Hoover had many disagreements; both were 
stubborn, and temperamentally they were quite unlike each 
other. But to Stimson his association with Herbert Hoover 
became and remained one of the most valued friendships of his 
life; he never felt any inclination to retract what he had said in 
his first reply: * % I deeply appreciate the confidence shown by 
Hoover and personal association with him would be most 
agreeable." 

Of all the assignments to which he was called in his years of 
public service, the appointment to the State Department was 
the one for the difficulties of which Stimson was least pre- 
pared. It was also the one occasion in his life when a call to 
public service interrupted work which he hated to leave. 
"This is, of course, a terrific revolution in all my plans. ... I 
cannot but feel badly at this interruption of our far-reaching 
plans, which have just been getting so nicely under way. . . . 
Certainly American democracy is a terribly wasteful instru- 
ment of human endeavor. Now I must go to Washington and 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 157 

face a new problem of organization and learn a new field of 
endeavor. I feel very ignorant and unqualified for it. 7 ' 1 

Foreign affairs, in all the years of his life after 1929, were 
to be Stimson's greatest single interest. His work in the State 
Department was followed by years of constantly growing ten- 
sion in world affairs and finally by a great war in which he 
played an active part. Throughout this period the foreign rela- 
tions of the United States became constantly more important, 
until in 1947 it seemed obvious to him that "Foreign affairs 
are now our most intimate domestic concern." It is therefore of 
some importance to note that when Stimson became Secretary 
of State in 1929 he was not at all an expert on American for- 
eign policy. And still less was he thoroughly informed of the 
problems and attitudes of many other nations. Of continental 
Europe, particularly, he knew very little beyond what a man 
might know from casual reading of the newspapers. Yet most 
newspapers commenting on his appointment seemed to feel 
that he was well prepared for his new assignment, and if he 
had looked back over the list of his predecessors, Stimson could 
not have concluded that his preparation was any feebler than 
the average. 

And in some areas, of course, he had had unusual experi- 
ence. In the Tacna-Arica and Nicaraguan affairs he had 
learned something about Latin America. In the Philippines 
he had learned much about the Far East, and this knowledge 
he had supplemented by short visits in China and Japan. He 
knew Great Britain and France. And every country that he 
had visited had made him more conscious of the interest and 
importance of foreign relations. It was this rising interest, 
especially stimulated by his year in the Philippines, that mod- 
erated his reluctance to leave Manila and gave him the neces- 
sary sense of challenge in the new assignment. 

Stimson was held in Manila until late February by the 
special session of the Philippine legislature. The voyage home 
was punctuated by brief visits in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and 
Tokyo. In all three places the new Secretary of State was given 
a most friendly welcome. On March 26 he reached Washing- 
ton, and two days later he took the oath of office. "My former 

1 Letter to A. T. Klots, January 31, 1929. 



158 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

chief , good old Chief Justice Taft, was good enough to come 
down to the Department and swear me in in the large outer 
room before a galaxy of newspapermen and photographers 
who dictated how we should stand, look, and appear in a way 
I had not been accustomed to in the Philippine Islands." 
(Diary, August 28, 1930) This was only the first of many dif- 
ferences between the State Department and Malacanan Pal- 
ace; in the four years that followed Stimson was not once as 
happy as he had been in Manila. 

Yet in the spring of 1929 the foreign relations of the United 
States, by any standard of later years, were remarkably placid. 
The world was at peace, and it was more prosperous than at 
any time since the Great War. The United States was at once 
withdrawn from the painful daily problems of Europe and 
amiably interested in the advancement of pacific hopes. This 
curious combination of irresponsibility with idealism had just 
found expression in the leading role of the American State 
Department in constructing the Pact of Paris, the Kellogg- 
Briand Pact for the renunciation of war. In this treaty, rati- 
fied by the American Senate in January, 1929, the nations of 
the world solemnly declared that "they condemn recourse to 
war for the solution of international controversies, and re- 
nounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations 
with one another." The treaty contained no provision for en- 
forcement, and one of its authors, Frank B. Kellogg, had spe- 
cifically stated that no enforcement was incumbent on the 
signatories. It was a pact of self-denial, and its weaknesses 
were soon to become apparent, but in the spring of 1929 it was 
young and undamaged, and it fairly represented both the pro- 
foundly peaceful attitude of the Americans and their gross 
ignorance of what must be done to keep the peace unbroken. 
A Secretary of State of unusual skill and stature, Charles 
Evans Hughes, had conducted American foreign policy with 
vigor and distinction during the drab Harding years. In a 
series of treaties signed under the leadership of Hughes at 
Washington in 1921-1922, a settlement had been reached in 
the Pacific and the Far East which seemed to preserve peace 
with honor, and a bold beginning had been made in the post- 
war mission of disarmament. Under Hughes and his successor 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 159 

the State Department had begun to turn away from earlier 
ill-advised adventures in Latin America. The American con- 
tribution to reconstruction in Europe seemed to -Americans 
more than generous. And American nonrecognition of the 
Russian Bolsheviks was generally approved by Americans. 
As for the League of Nations, no responsible political leader 
dared to advocate adherence, but suspicion of the League had 
begun to decrease, and in dozens of nonpolitical activities in- 
dividual Americans, and even official observers, were co-oper- 
ating in its work. But in 1929 there still hung over America 
the fog of isolationism that had been created when the warm 
idealism of Wilson crashed against the cold nationalism of 
Brandegee and Lodge. The country had defied reality in 1920; 
nine years later there had come no punishment for this folly, 
and the people were thus more confirmed than ever in their 
determination to avoid foreign entanglements. Narrowly con- 
sidered, American foreign relations between 1920 and 1929 
had been highly successful. The experience of 1917 had lost 
its original glamour. More and more men like Stimson, who 
persisted in the conviction that America had played a neces- 
sary and noble part in World War I, found their convictions 
lightly set aside by younger men. Outright disillusionment 
with Wilson's great crusade was constantly increasing. The 
American people were perhaps less prepared than ever before 
to take a responsible part in the world's affairs. 

But the peace they enjoyed was fragile as fragile as the 
great stock market boom which Stimson found in full swing 
when he returned from Manila. Eight months later the bubble 
of speculative wishes burst, and within two years the whole 
flimsy fabric of the postwar peace began to come apart. But 
isolationism and false hopes persisted, and the American Sec- 
retary of State suffered accordingly. He was plunged into a 
desperate world-wide battle for the highest stakes, and his 
hand, as he later said, was 'a pair of deuces.' 

But in the spring of 1929 all this was in the future. To 
American newspapers, when Stimson took the oath of office, 
the most interesting and important question about the new 
Secretary of State was whether he could settle the painful issue 
of precedence which had arisen between Mrs. Gann, the Vice 



160 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

President's sister and official hostess, and Mrs. Longworth, the 
wife of the Speaker of the House. When Stimson solved this 
problem by passing it on to the diplomatic corps, he was ap- 
plauded as a Daniel come to judgment. And in a way the solu- 
tion was symbolic. If the United States could hand its interna- 
tional problems to the League, or to any of the foreigners 
from whom they came, perhaps the problems might cease to 
exist. Meanwhile, on with the boom. 

And it was only as he looked back later that the tragic folly 
of these attitudes was wholly clear to Stimson. Of course he 
had never shared the prevailing horror of foreign entangle- 
ments. He entered office as a recognized believer in inter- 
national co-operation. There were things to be done by such 
men in 1929, and Stimson went to work without any knowledge 
of the task that lay ahead. It was only as history unrolled that 
he learned how his hands were tied from the beginning by the 
opinions of his countrymen. 

When Stimson arrived in Washington, he had three things 
to do before he could really begin to work. He must find a 
place to live ; he must get himself an Under Secretary of his 
own choosing, and he must become better acquainted with his 
new chief, Mr. Hoover. All three of these matters were 
quickly settled, and each of them in singularly satisfactory 
form. 

The most difficult was finding a house. It was not until mid- 
summer that the Stimsons decided to buy an estate called 
Woodley. At the time it was an expensive decision, but as it was 
done by the sale of some wonderfully high-priced stocks which 
were radically devaluated by the market crash a little later, 
it was probably a most profitable investment. But the financial 
advantage was the least of the matter. For most of the sixteen 
years that followed, Woodley was Stimson's home, and in all 
Washington there was not a house where he and his wife could 
have been happier. The old southern colonial building was 
comfortable and spacious; the grounds were extensive; the 
view across Rock Creek Valley to the center of the city was 
peaceful and consoling to them both. It was as near as they 
could come to Highhold, and when Woodley was given to 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 161 

Andover, in 1946, the wrench of parting was more severe than 
either of them would have thought possible when they first 
moved in. 

The search for an Under Secretary had begun even before 
Stimson returned from the Philippines. The labor of scouting 
was shared by two old friends, Felix Frankfurter and George 
Roberts. Men who seemed suitable to both Frankfurter and 
Roberts were not numerous, but the Harvard Law School did 
Stimson one more kindness by holding a celebration at which 
Frankfurter found himself seated next to Joseph P. Cotton. 
Cotton was an old friend; it was he almost alone who had 
caught the spirit of the Philippine interlude, writing to con- 
gratulate Stimson on his opportunity for adventure. When 
Stimson learned that Cotton would serve him, he knew that 
he could find no better man. Everything that Cotton did in 
the months that followed confirmed this judgment, and his 
death in March, 1931, was the heaviest personal blow of Stim- 
son's service as Secretary of State. It was also a great loss to 
the United States, for Cotton was only fifty-six when he died, 
and few men of his generation were more fully equipped for 
distinguished public service. 

To Stimson he was a godsend. Cotton was able, flexible, un- 
derstanding, kindly, and witty. He was idealistic but not fool- 
ish, practical but not cynical, wholly loyal, and completely 
frank. In many of his qualities he was a most valuable comple- 
ment to Stimson, who knew that he sometimes seemed stern 
and aloof to his subordinates. Cotton promptly became Stim- 
son's alter ego he was what the perfect Chief of Staff is to 
the Army commander and something more. While he lived, 
he was Stimson's chief adviser in every field, and his free- 
wheeling executive in many. 

Stimson's first ten days as Secretary of State were spent at 
the White House as the President's guest. It was a typical 
gesture of personal kindness, and it allowed the two men to 
become fully acquainted with each other. For years Stimson 
had admired Herbert Hoover, but he had never known him 
well. Now he was astonished by the President's extraordinary 
grasp of facts. 'He has the greatest capacity for assimilating 
and organizing information of any man I ever knew.' Mr. 



1 62 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

Hoover was very fully informed, so Stimson learned more than 
he taught, confining his own comments to an ardent advocacy 
of his Philippine doctrine. 

There were two major foreign issues before the American 
Government in 1929, when these early conversations took place. 
One was the tariff, and to Stimson's great relief this subject did 
not fall within the jurisdiction of the State Department. He 
had seen in 1909 what happens when Republicans revise the 
tariff and he had shuddered in 1928 when he found that Mr. 
Hoover as a candidate had promised tariff revision. But it was 
a settled decision when he reached Washington ; a special ses- 
sion of Congress had already been called. He kept out of it. 

The other major question was one that Stimson promptly 
plunged into with enthusiasm. This was the matter of naval 
disarmament and relations with Great Britain. 

2. LONDON IN 1930 

The absorbing interest of Stimson's first sixteen months in 
the State Department was naval limitation. The preliminary 
negotiations lasted seven months ; detailed preparation for the 
Conference occupied three more; for three months in early 
1930 he was in London attending the prolonged Conference in 
which his principal hopes were realized; for three months 
after that his main objective in life was to secure the ratifica- 
tion of the treaty by the Senate. The London Naval Treaty was 
to him at the time a great forward step, and of his part in it he 
was proud. He could not know that it was to be the last con- 
crete achievement of the great postwar movement to turn 
swords into plowshares, and that in a very few years the 
whole effort of which it was a part would break down. In 
1930 the Naval Treaty seemed a monument to the constructive 
and co-operative statesmanship of the leaders of three great 
seafaring nations. 

The First World War left to the victors overwhelming mili- 
tary strength and a strong disinclination to use it. It produced 
in all countries, and with particular force in the English- 
speaking nations, a desire to be rid forever of the heavy burden 
of preparation for war. The first great result of this sentiment 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 163 

was the series of treaties signed at Washington in the^winter of 
1921-1922. Spurred on by a magnificent gesture from Secretary 
of State Hughes on behalf of the United States, the naval 
powers of the world succeeded in ending an incipient race in 
battleship building. Warships of more than 10,000 tons were 
rigidly limited ; great building programs were abandoned, and 
much tonnage was scrapped. More significant still, the Naval 
Treaty was accompanied by a general political settlement in 
the Pacific Ocean which appeared to lay the foundation for 
lasting good relations among the major Pacific powers, and 
particularly between the United States and Japan. 

In the years after 1922, though the Washington treaties re- 
tained their force and favor, it became evident that they were 
incomplete. Competition had been ended in the field of capital 
ships, but it reappeared in other categories, and particularly 
in the construction of heavy cruisers of 10,000 tons, with 8-inch 
guns so-called Treaty cruisers, whose specifications were de- 
termined more by the words of the Washington settlement than 
by the requirements of naval strategy. This new naval rivalry 
became the principal immediate obstacle to broader discus- 
sions of land and air disarmament. And it assumed particular 
bitterness in issues between Great Britain and the United 
States, two nations which on any rational ground should have 
been delighted to see each other strong. In 1927, in Geneva, 
irreconcilable differences between the British and the Ameri- 
cans caused a breakdown of naval discussions ; in these discus- 
sions the Japanese honorably participated as a good neighbor 
to both parties. During 1928 and early 1929 there was no im- 
provement in the situation, and the American Congress author- 
ized a formidable program for the construction of Treaty 
cruisers, aimed at the achievement of a nebulous but appar- 
ently vital goal called "parity" with Great Britain. Nor did 
the British Conservative Government find it desirable to with- 
draw from the very advanced position it had maintained in 
1927. Under the pressure of these events, Anglo-American 
cordiality was severely strained, and in the United States there 
was a marked revival of the anti-British feeling which has so 
often accompanied assertions of American nationalism. Jingoes 
in both nations were noisy. 



1 64 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

At the same time cooler heads and preponderant opinion 
in both countries recognized that neither could gain from a 
naval impasse. Strong public support awaited leaders who 
would undertake to set their faces against jingoism and work 
out an agreement. The signing of the Kellogg Pact in 1928 
and its ratification by the United States in early 1929 were 
evidence of a deep-seated yearning for peace and disarmament; 
a naval race stimulated mainly by considerations of prestige 
seemed clearly incompatible with these desires. In response 
to such sentiments tentative steps toward new Anglo-American 
negotiations had been made even before Mr. Hoover was 
inaugurated. 

But it was the new President who gave real impetus to the 
effort to break the deadlock of 1927. Even before Stimson's 
arrival in Washington Mr. Hoover had begun his four-year 
campaign for effective disarmament. Mr. Hoover's driving 
energy was wholly enlisted in the effort to give life and reality 
to the Kellogg Pact. The pact seemed to him a proper starting 
point for a new and bolder attack in the problem of armaments. 
And as the first step in breaking the log jam he wished to end 
naval disagreements between the United States and Great 
Britain. 

Stimson's approach was somewhat different, but it had ex- 
actly the same practical result. He inclined to place primary 
emphasis on the re-establishment of understanding with Great 
Britain; returning from the Philippines to the Atlantic coast 
he had been shocked to find that anti-British sentiment had 
greatly increased since his departure. Being himself a con- 
firmed believer in the vital importance of firm Anglo-Ameri- 
can friendship, he at once determined to make the repair of 
relations with Great Britain a cardinal objective of his service 
as Secretary of State. The obvious first step was to reach agree- 
ment on naval limitation. That such agreement would also 
contribute to the general cause of disarmament was important 
to Stimson, and gratifying; but it was the restoration of under- 
standing with Great Britain that he put first. 

Although Mr. Hoover's first steps were taken in March and 
were promptly followed by co-operative gestures from Great 
Britain, the Americans decided to await the results of a forth- 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 165 

coming British election before beginning detailed negotia- 
tion. It seemed likely that the Conservatives might be defeated 
in this contest, and experience since the war had clearly dem- 
onstrated that the British Labor Party was better able than 
its rival to make progress toward international agreements of 
a peaceful sort Meanwhile, as Ambassador to Great Britain, 
Mr. Hoover appointed Charles G. Dawes, the retiring Vice 
President, a man who had won high international standing for 
his part in adjusting postwar debts and reparations. When the 
Labor leader Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister on 
June 5, the stage was set for active discussion. Two days later 
Dawes sailed for London, and during the three months that 
followed he was the active intermediary for a remarkable 
negotiation between London and Washington. 

The detailed record of this negotiation does not belong in 
this story. Essentially it was a candid and honorable exchange 
between Mr. Hoover and Mr. MacDonald. Stimson was de- 
lighted to find that both men shared his liking for frankness. 
Each was unruffled by searching questions; both were pre- 
pared to make concessions. Gradually the wide gulf that had 
separated the two nations at Geneva was narrowed. The great 
concession was Mr. MacDonald's retreat from the unaccept- 
able British requirement of seventy cruisers to a demand for 
fifty. On the American side there was perhaps no equivalent 
concession; since the British had conceded the principle of 
parity, and since the American cruiser fleet was mostly still on 
paper, it was the size of the British cruiser requirement that 
determined the major lines of agreement. When this require- 
ment was materially reduced by MacDonald, it was clear that 
a settlement was in sight. The remaining differences were 
largely due to the intransigence of the American Navy's Gen- 
eral Board, which held a very high opinion of Washington 
Treaty cruisers and wished its cruiser fleet to contain a larger 
number of 8-inch-gunned ships than the British were willing to 
accept The British argued, first, that such an advantage would 
be more than parity because of the great difference in fighting 
power between 8-inch vessels and the usual 6-inch cruiser, 
and second, that a heavy American preponderance in 8-inch 
cruisers would stimulate Japanese building in the same class 



166 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

beyond the point acceptable in the British Pacific dominions. 

In October, 1929, when it was clear that Anglo-American 
disagreement had been so narrowed that a final agreement 
could easily be reached in conference, Ramsay MacDonald 
visited the United States. It was the first visit of a. British 
Prime Minister to America, and it was a personal triumph 
not equaled by a foreign statesman until the arrival of Winston 
Churchill twelve years later on a very different mission. Mac- 
Donald's gentle sincerity, and his instinctive eloquence and 
charm, made him the ideal ambassador of a reconstructed 
friendship. His visit to Mr. Hoover at the President's Rapidan 
camp marked a high point in the public popularity of both 
men. Stimson found himself strongly drawn to this Scotsman, 
so friendly and understanding, so patently one who loved peace 
and good will to all men, and his friendship with MacDonald 
grew stronger with every later meeting. Not a year passed in 
the seven before MacDonald's death that the two men did not 
meet, at first mainly on business, and, after Stimson left office, 
as old friends and joint lovers of the Scottish moors. 

As disagreement between Great Britain and the United 
States had been the main obstacle to any extension of the Wash- 
ington Treaty, the ending of that disagreement opened the 
way for a general conference of the major naval powers; 
accordingly in the autumn of 1929 the British issued invita- 
tions to France, Italy, Japan, and the United States for a five- 
power meeting to be held in London the following January. 
Stimson was to be the head of the American delegation, and 
he and Mr. Hoover gave much time and thought to the ap- 
pointment of its other members. 

The result was a delegation which in weight and balance 
always seemed to Stimson as strong as any sent by the United 
States to an international conference in his lifetime; it con- 
tained two Cabinet officers, two Senators, and three Ambassa- 
dors. With Stimson from the Cabinet 'came Secretary Adams 
of the Navy Department, a man who combined loyalty to his 
Department with a keen sense of the proper relation of naval 
interests to national policy. The two Senators were David 
Reed, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Joseph T. Robinson, 
Democrat of Arkansas. Reed was a resolute and skillful 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 167 

negotiator and an experienced student of naval affairs. Robin- 
son was the Senate minority leader, but no narrow partisan ; 
his hearty co-operation in London and his sturdy support of 
the final treaty were indispensable factors in its eventual ratifi- 
cation. The three Ambassadors were Dawes, whose personal 
diplomacy had already played a major role in naval discus- 
sions, Hugh Gibson, Ambassador to Belgium, perhaps 
America's outstanding expert in the technicalities of disarma- 
ment, and Dwight Morrow, Ambassador to Mexico, a man 
with a well-earned reputation for diplomacy and insight It 
was a strong list, well supported by technical experts and 
advisers. One of the most rewarding experiences of Stimson's 
life was the privilege of leading such a group of men. From 
all of them he received complete co-operation and support; 
each of them employed his special talents wherever the dele- 
gation chairman asked for it, and from all came valuable sug- 
gestions as to American policy. Every important decision taken 
at the Conference by the American delegation was unanimous. 

The London Naval Conference was opened by King 
George V on January 17, 1930, and adjourned the following 
April 22. It was three times delayed by outside events, one of 
them a Japanese general election, the other two, Cabinet crises 
in France. From the point of view of the American delegates, 
its work fell into three phases: the completion of agreement 
with Great Britain, the negotiation of a settlement with Japan, 
and the unsuccessful effort to bring France and Italy into an 
agreement on vessels of 10,000 tons and less. 

Agreement with Great Britain was easy. As soon as the 
American delegation was able to make a detailed study of the 
issues which had separated the American Navy's General 
Board from the last British proposals of the Hoover-Mac- 
Donald conversations, it came to a unanimous agreement that 
insistence on the General Board's position would wreck the 
Conference for a purely hypothetical advantage, and it reduced 
the American requirement in 8-inch cruisers from twenty-one 
to eighteen, asking in return a balancing increase in the 
American quota of 6-inch ships. From the moment of this 
decision, which was reached on February 4 and promptly 
endorsed by Mr. Hoover, there remained only trivial differ- 



1 68 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ences between the British and the Americans, and these were 
easily adjusted in later meetings. 

This shift in the American cruiser balance from 8-inch to 
6-inch ships was the concession most violently attacked by big- 
navy men when the treaty came before the Senate for ratifica- 
tion. It would be hard to say whether these American ad- 
vocates of 8-inch strength or the British who had opposed a 
twenty-one-ship American fleet of 8-inch vessels were the more 
eloquent in describing the superiority of the heavier guns to 
any vessels with smaller weapons. In Stimson's view this elo- 
quence later assumed a comical aspect, for the Washington 
Treaty 8-inch ships did not turn out to be an outstanding suc- 
cess, in peace or war, while the so-called London cruisers, 
6-inch ships of 10,000 tons, proved to be among the most valu- 
able and effective vessels in the American Navy. And this was 
only the most conspicuous example of the errors of technical 
judgment which lay behind many of the positions ardently 
presented as matters of national necessity by the various delega- 
tions. It was fortunate for the United States Navy that its chief 
representative in London, Admiral William V. Pratt, took 
a different position on cruisers from most of his colleagues. 
Pratt had been carefully selected for this mission by the ad- 
ministration's civilian leaders, and Stimson found that he 
thoroughly justified their confidence in his judgment and 
vision. 

Agreement with the Japanese was reached only after pro- 
longed and complex negotiations conducted for the Americans 
mainly by Senator Reed. The essential difficulty was one of 
Japanese pride, which had been seriously offended by the 
Washington ratio of ten-ten-six in battleship strength. The 
Japanese now wished their proportion to be seven against the 
ten of the United States and Great Britain, and they particu- 
larly wished to achieve this ratio in 8-inch cruisers. This the 
Americans could not accept without arousing a storm of anti- 
Japanese resentment at home, and the British were perhaps 
even more categorical, maintaining that any increase in Jap- 
anese heavy cruisers would force additional British building 
in that category and so destroy the Anglo-American agree- 
ment. The Japanese never surrendered the principle for which 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 169 

they were contending, but they finally accepted a compromise 
skillfully designed by Senator Reed. The Japanese fleet was 
limited to a strength of six to ten in heavy cruisers, but the 
Americans agreed not to complete their heavy-cruiser pro- 
gram until after 1936, at which time the expiration of the 
treaty would permit a reopening of the question. The Japanese 
achieved their ratio of seven in other categories, and in sub- 
marines they were granted parity. To Stimson the outstand- 
ing feature of the Japanese negotiations was the frankness and 
friendliness with which the Japanese delegates advanced their 
position. From the first preliminary conversations in Wash- 
ington until the treaty was ratified, Japanese political leaders 
were continuously fair and conciliatory; they were faced by 
a noisy big-navy opposition at home, but they spoke of it and 
dealt with it in the same manner as British and American 
leaders. Only the heavy-cruiser question might have led to 
disagreement, and in the face of a firm Anglo-American front 
the Japanese in the end had to choose between abandoning 
their demands and accepting the responsibility for failure to 
reach agreement. The Minseito Cabinet preferred interna- 
tional good will to national pride. Japan sacrificed less in the 
London Treaty than either of her English-speaking rivals, 
and she gained greatly in good will among the Western 
nations. 

The third problem and one to which no solution was 
found was to bring France and Italy into the treaty. This 
was a question which only indirectly affected the Americans; 
the size of the French and Italian navies was not in itself a 
matter of concern to the United States ; these were European 
fleets, almost entirely, and there was no American demand 
for supremacy, or even parity, in European waters. It was 
only as the French and Italians, building against each other, 
might arouse the British to expand their requirements that 
Americans would be affected. Nor was there anything im- 
portant that the American delegation could do to bring the 
French and the Italians together. Behind their naval rivalry 
lay a series of important political differences in the Mediter- 
ranean area. At London the French would not abandon their 
insistence on a cruiser fleet strongly superior to the Italians', 



170 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and the latter never budged from their claim to parity with 
France. Even when MacDonald and the British offered po- 
litical guarantees of the Mediterranean status quo which, 
while not very strong, probably overstepped the majority opin- 
ion of the British Parliament, the French were not appeased. 
Stimson, constantly offering his services as honest broker to 
both sides, could not remember when he had seen three grim- 
mer and less compromising faces than those of the French 
leaders as they insisted on their full naval program. And one of 
these grim faces was that of the great apostle of peace and 
international friendship, Aristide Briand. No Frenchman 
could give parity to Italy and survive in political life. 

It was during the prolonged attempt to break the Franco- 
Italian deadlock that Stimson had his first painful experience 
with those Americans who, as he later put it, were convinced 
"that the world would overnight become good and clean and 
peaceful everywhere if only America would lead the way." 
Believing that the French would give up their extreme de- 
mands if the British and the Americans would join in a "con- 
sultative pact" against aggression, a number of Americans, 
newspapermen and private citizens, kept urging "leadership" 
on the American delegation and on Mr. Hoover, quite ob- 
livious of the fact that no consultative pact which could be 
ratified in the American Senate would contain anything of 
the remotest value to France. Stimson was more than willing 
to join in any consultative agreement that was acceptable to 
the Senate, and as a private citizen he fully shared the view 
that it was foolish for America to be frightened by all "en- 
tanglements" in Europe, but his main business was to bring 
home a treaty which could be ratified. If there were to be 
political guarantees in a settlement, they would have to come 
from Great Britain, and Stimson did what he could to per- 
suade the British leaders that they would do well to accept 
the advice of their own Foreign Office in favor of such guar- 
antees. But no American leader could promise any "consulta- 
tive pact" except one wholly divorced from any responsibility 
for action, and Briand himself told Stimson that so weak an 
offer would have no effect whatever on French naval demands. 

All that the United States could do was to make its friendly 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 171 

interest in a solution perfectly evident, and this Stimson did. 
He made it clear in a press statement on March 24 that the 
United States would be happy to see French demands for 
security settled by the British and that a pact involving only 
consultative obligations might then be acceptable to Ameri- 
cans. Further than that he could not go, and indeed messages 
from home made it appear that even in going so far the Ameri- 
can delegation had outrun much senatorial opinion. The 
American demarche, combined with a last effort by Mac- 
Donald, succeeded in changing the atmosphere of the Con- 
ference, and it ended with a far better feeling among the 
French and Italians than had seemed likely in early March. 
But no agreement was reached, and in its provisions for the 
limitation of vessels under 10,000 tons the London Naval 
Treaty remained a three-power settlement. For two years 
afterward the French and Italians continued to negotiate for a 
settlement; in these negotiations the American State Depart- 
ment, and still more the British Foreign Office, took an active 
and friendly interest. But no agreement was reached; the 
French continued to insist on superiority, and the Italians 
clung to parity. 

The Franco-Italian disagreement in London was Stimson's 
introduction to the complexities of postwar Europe. He had 
of course known that the French were wholly determined to 
protect the status quo of the peace treaties, and that the Italians 
were deeply dissatisfied with the results of Versailles. But he 
had not previously understood the full meaning of this cleav- 
age, and the degree to which it dominated the international 
relations of the two countries. In London, and indeed through- 
out his term as Secretary of State, it was French intransigence 
that he found particularly annoying; but he was never able 
to forget the great part France had played in 1914-1918, and 
his friendship for the French people, and most of their leaders, 
never wavered. Reconciliation between France and Italy, 
however, remained a problem in statesmanship for the leaders 
of these two countries, not for an American, and it was the 
common tragedy of the two nations that in this task their 
leaders failed and though the French were more at fault 



1 72 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

in the beginning, it seemed obvious to Stimson that the later 
and decisive guilt belonged to the Fascist dictator Mussolini. 

In its clauses limiting the tonnage of cruisers, destroyers, 
and submarines, the London Treaty was signed by only three 
powers, but in other important respects it was a five-power 
settlement. It provided for the immediate scrapping of nine 
battleships already earmarked for eventual destruction by the 
Washington Treaty. It declared a holiday in battleship build- 
ing until 1936, thus saving the expense of new construction 
authorized in the Washington Treaty. Most important of all, 
from Stimson's standpoint, it provided for rules prohibiting 
unrestricted submarine warfare; this clause, which was the 
only one in the treaty without a time limit, was ratified by all 
five nations and later adhered to by every significant naval 
power in the world. It marked the acceptance by the nations 
of a rule of international law for which Elihu Root had vainly 
contended in 1922, and to Stimson at the time it seemed an 
achievement which in itself justified the Conference. It out- 
lawed the form of war which had been directly responsible 
for American participation in the Great War. Nothing that 
happened in World War II was more saddening to Stimson 
than the promptness with which all belligerents prided them- 
selves on submarine campaigns which flagrantly violated this 
treaty. But the future was hidden in 1930, and no section of 
the treaty was more generally approved than its restriction of 
submarine warfare. 

It was as a team that the Americans had labored in London, 
and on their return to Washington they went to work as a 
team to secure Senate ratification of their treaty. Mr. Hoover 
was once more the leader; he insisted on prompt action, and 
when the Senate adjourned in early July without a vote, he 
convened a special session. Stimson played his part in public 
speeches, statements on Capitol Hill, and verbal exchanges 
with Senator Hiram Johnson. Perhaps most important of all, 
Senators Reed and Robinson were firm in their insistence that 
Uncle Sam had not been cheated by the foreigners. The op- 
position was noisy but hopelessly outnumbered ; only the most 
embittered isolationists and the most violent big-navy men were 
against ratification. On July 21, after the threat of all-night 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 173 

sessions in the midsummer heat had wilted the opposition, the 
treaty was ratified by a vote of fifty-eight to nine. It was a 
great triumph for Mr. Hoover, and a great personal satisfac- 
tion to Stimson. 

The London Naval Treaty had begun to die even before it 
expired in December, 1936. By the middle of that year Euro- 
pean rivalry had so developed that the British invoked the 
"escalator clause" of the treaty in order to avoid scrapping 
vessels previously earmarked for destruction; the British ex- 
ample permitted the Americans and the Japanese to follow 
suit. And long before 1936 the Japanese had served notice that 
after that date they would no longer accept naval inferiority 
to any nation ; their insistence on parity, wholly unacceptable 
to Great Britain and the United States, effectively ended the 
era of general naval limitation. 

The London Treaty thus had a short and far from placid 
life. But Stimson did not for a moment believe that for that 
reason it was a failure. In itself the treaty was an important 
step toward disarmament and lasting peace. In its political 
effects it was wholly beneficial, serving to end a significant 
rift between Great Britain and America, while at the same 
time it improved the political relations between the United 
States and Japan. It was not the London Treaty that was a 
failure. The failure was that of the leaders in Japan and on 
the continent of Europe who so quickly turned away from the 
peaceful path on which the treaty was a milestone. 

Nor can it be argued that the treaty served as a boomerang 
against the United States by unwisely limiting her naval 
strength. It was not the treaty, but Congress and the President, 
supported by the public, that prevented the construction of 
fighting ships in the years that followed. Long before he left 
office in 1933 Stimson had become an advocate of increased 
naval construction ; there was plenty of room for it under the 
London Treaty. But a different course was taken, and even 
under Franklin Roosevelt, who firmly believed in a stronger 
Navy, construction was so slow that when the London Treaty 
expired, in 1936, existing American plans for naval construc- 
tion aimed to achieve treaty strength only in 1942. 

There was folly in the attitudes which forced the London 



174 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Treaty to take the shape it did, but Stimson could not feel, 
looking back, that this was the fault of the American negotia- 
tors. The American delegation was sent to London to get 
parity. A more ridiculous goal can hardly be imagined. On 
every ground, the United States should have been happy to see 
the British Navy just as big and strong as the British pocket- 
book would permit excepting of course as this size might 
stimulate rival building. That America should have no other 
important object than a fleet as big as the British was utter 
nonsense. But there it was, and Stimson did his best to deal 
with it. No treaty without parity would have received ten 
votes in the American Senate, so the American delegation 
brought back parity. What good it did his country, Stimson 
was never able to say. 

There remained the solid fact of complete naval limitation, 
binding on three powers whose uncontrolled rivalry had only 
a year before threatened serious political results. This was 
the real gain at London, more important by far than the 
amount of reduction in naval armament which was achieved. 
This reduction was by no means insignificant, but it was not 
nearly so great as Mr. Hoover had originally hoped it might 
be. Among all the principal participants on the American side 
it was perhaps Stimson who was happiest about the treaty. 
He had seen it throughout as a method of bringing the British 
and the Americans together, ending mutual irritation and 
beginning a closer co-operation in all things. This objective 
had been attained. Anglo-American relations reached a level 
of cordiality in the year after the London Conference that 
was not equaled again until 1940. 

3. LATIN AMERICA IN 1931 

When Stimson returned in September, 1930, from a vacation 
after the approval of the naval treaty, he was greeted at once 
by a problem which occupied a great part of his attention dur- 
ing the six months that followed the problem of Latin Amer- 
ican policy. "Cotton was waiting for me with the question of 
the recognition of the new revolutionary juntas in Argentina, 
Peru, and Bolivia." (Diary, September 15, 1930) The Latin 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 175 

American countries, most of them heavily dependent on the 
export of one or two major raw materials, were the first to be 
heavily stricken by the spreading world depression; during 
1930 and 1931 there were ten successful revolutions among 
the twenty republics of Latin America. This instability, com- 
bined with a rising tide of boundary disputes and the steady 
pursuit of certain positive American objectives in Latin Amer- 
ica, gave to that area a continuing importance throughout 
Stimson's term as Secretary of State. After the spring of 1931 
still more urgent questions in other parts of the world absorbed 
the bulk of his time, however, and it will be convenient to 
treat all of his Latin American activities in this section. 

The Latin American policy of the United States in 1929 
was in essence what it had always been. It comprised three 
principles. The first and greatest of these was the Monroe 
Doctrine, which asserted that the United States could not 
permit any non-American power to make any of the inde- 
pendent nations of the Americas "subject for future coloniza- 
tion." The Monroe Doctrine did not oppose the existing 
colonial holdings of European powers, but it placed the United 
States in lasting opposition to any expansion by any European 
nation in the Americas, even by the expedient of acquiring 
the colonies of another European nation. Effective at first 
largely by virtue of the co-operation of Great Britain, the 
Monroe Doctrine when Stimson took office in 1929 had been 
American policy for over a century, and for more than twenty 
years it had been completely unchallenged. It was an axiom 
of American policy, and it was so accepted by the Eastern 
Hemisphere. And the United States in the twentieth century 
was quite able to sustain it alone. 

The second great principle of American policy in Latin 
America was at once more regional and more intense. This 
was that in the Caribbean Sea and in Central America the 
United States was bound to especial vigilance by the require- 
ments of her national defense. The Panama Canal, and the 
Atlantic islands which covered the Canal and the Gulf of 
Mexico, were vital links in the strategic security of the United 
States. Thus the general sensitivity of the United States toward 
European activities in Latin America has always been espe- 



176 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

cially acute in the case of Central American and Caribbean 
republics. At the same time these were in general the countries 
least able to maintain internal order and safeguard the legiti- 
mate rights and interests of foreign nationals in their territory. 
When Stimson became Secretary of State, the American 
Government was directly involved in the internal affairs of no 
less than three of these countries, while in two more she had 
certain contractual rights of intervention. All of these com- 
plications were the direct result of America's strategic con- 
cern for the security of her continental defense; she had in- 
tervened because of her overriding national interest and her 
abnormal sensitivity to the possibility of intervention by other 
nations acting to safeguard their rights under the sanction of 
international law. 

But this intervention was to some degree in conflict with 
the third great principle of American policy toward Latin 
America, which was to respect the independence and integrity 
of all the nations of the American continent. This principle 
had been violated in the war of 1848; it had been violated 
again, perhaps (on this point Stimson was never convinced), 
when Theodore Roosevelt, in his eagerness to get on with the 
building of the Panama Canal, "took the Isthmus" from 
Colombia. It nevertheless remained general American policy 
to avoid any infringement of the sovereignty of Latin Ameri- 
can nations. As Stimson put it in a speech outlining his own 
attitude toward Latin American affairs, "it is a very conserva- 
tive statement to say that the general foreign policy of the 
United States during the past century toward the republics 
of Latin America has been characterized by a regard for their 
rights as independent nations which, when compared with 
current international morality in the other hemisphere, has 
been as unusual as it has been praiseworthy." 2 

It was the constant endeavor of the American State Depart- 
ment, while Stimson was its Secretary, to bring American 
policy into the strictest conformity with this third great prin- 
ciple, and to do it in such a way as to satisfy not only Ameri- 
cans, but Latin Americans as well, of the good intentions of 

2 Address to Council of Foreign Relations, February 6, 1931, printed in Foreign 
Affairs, April 1931, and hereafter in this chapter called "Council Speech." 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 177 

the Northern Colossus. In this purpose the State Department 
was merely developing a line of policy pursued with particular 
energy by two earlier Secretaries, Root and Hughes. On their 
foundations Stimson was able to build, and in Latin America 
as in naval limitation he had the hearty support of President 
Hoover. As President-elect, Mr. Hoover had made a highly 
successful tour of Latin America, constantly asserting his con- 
viction that "we wish for the maintenance of their inde- 
pendence, the growth of their stability, and their prosperity." 
Stimson was further supported by a distinguished staff of 
diplomatic assistants. The chiefs of mission in Latin America 
were mainly career officers, partly because Mr. Hoover was 
anxious to strengthen the diplomatic service and partly be- 
cause the men who had earned political rewards were not 
ordinarily eager to serve in Latin America. The Assistant 
Secretary in charge of Latin America, Francis White, was an 
experienced and skillful professional diplomat; he had a thor- 
ough knowledge of Latin America and a sound sense of 
policy. White was appointed before Stimson took office, and 
he remained through the whole four years of the Hoover 
administration. 

The question of recognition raised by Cotton on September 
15 was one which recurred repeatedly in following months 
as Latin American peoples exercised their predilection for 
revolution as a means of registering discontent. Throughout 
this period Stimson and Mr. Hoover steadily adhered to a 
policy of quickly recognizing each revolutionary government 
just as soon as it had demonstrated its de facto control of the 
country and had announced its readiness to fulfill its inter- 
national obligations. This had been the traditional policy of 
the United States, except during the Wilson administration, 
and in Stimson's view Wilson's well-intentioned experiment 
had been far from successful. "The American policy in re- 
gard to these matters had been undeviating until Woodrow 
Wilson came in and it was interesting to get a new view of 
the dangers which have come from his curious character a 
blend of high idealism with absolute inability to foresee the 
reaction which his views and efforts would produce on other 
people. Whereas all the rest of the world had heretofore 



178 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

been satisfied to decide questions of recognition upon the out- 
ward facts of our relations with other nations, Wilson must 
needs try to delve into their internal policies and to seek to 
reform them according to his own views and his own forecast 
of world movements. The result when he tried it on Mexico 
in 1914 was simply to set everything at sixes and sevens. In- 
stead of promoting feelings of friendship with Mexico he 
initiated feelings of hate and hostility towards this country 
which have lasted until Morrow's ambassadorship." (Diary, 
September 15, 1930) 

Stimson believed that the true line of policy was one an- 
nounced by an earlier Democrat. "Said Mr. Jefferson in 1792 : 
'We certainly cannot deny to other nations that principle 
whereon our own Government is founded, that every nation 
has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it 
pleases, and to change these forms at its own will; and ex- 
ternally to transact business with other nations through what- 
ever organ it chooses, whether that be a king, convention, 
assembly, committee, president, or whatever it be.' 3 What- 
ever theoretical advantages there might be in the Wilson 
policy, it was certain to be ineffective in practice. Free 
constitutional institutions could not be imposed on a sovereign 
nation by the diplomatic device of nonrecognition. Nonrecog- 
nition could only be regarded as a form of intervention, and 
because of the size and power of the United States, and the 
degree to which its lead was followed by European countries, 
such intervention was of more than theoretical importance in 
Latin America. Stimson set his face against the Wilson theory. 
"The present administration has declined to follow the policy 
of Mr. Wilson and has followed consistently the former prac- 
tice of this Government since the days of Jefferson. As soon 
as it was reported to us, through our diplomatic representa- 
tives, that the new governments in Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, 
Brazil, and Panama were in control of the administrative ma- 
chinery of the state, with the apparent general acquiescence 
of their peoples, and that they were willing and apparently 
able to discharge their international and conventional obliga- 
tions, they were recognized by our Government." 4 

3 Jefferson to Pinckney, Works, III, 500, quoted in Council Speech. 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 179 

In one section of Latin America, however, Stimson could not 
follow this traditional policy. In the five republics of Central 
America (excluding Panama) "An entirely different situa- 
tion exists from that normally presented." For these little 
states, under a treaty signed in 1907 and renewed in 1923, had 
bound themselves not to recognize revolutionary governments 
in each other's countries until they had been approved in a 
national election. The State Department under Secretary 
Hughes had announced its adherence to their principle, and 
Stimson followed the same policy. The reason for the treaty 
of 1923 was simply that most of the Central American re- 
publics required a special method of discouraging their turbu- 
lent citizens from constant rebellion and military uprising, 
and although the policy of Hughes involved "possible difficul- 
ties and dangers of application," Stimson believed in 1931 
"that no impartial student can avoid the conclusion that the 
treaty and the policy which it established have been produc- 
tive of very great good." It had materially reduced the in- 
cidence of bloodshed in the turbulent and immature republics 
of Central America. 

In 1934, when the Central American republics themselves 
abandoned the treaty of 1923, the United States extended its 
doctrine of de facto recognition to all of Latin America. Stim- 
son by that time was no longer in close touch with Latin 
American policy, but he believed that the Roosevelt adminis- 
tration did well in avoiding a return to the misplaced morality 
of Woodrow Wilson. 

The policy of promptly recognizing de facto governments 
was one way of avoiding intervention in the internal affairs 
of Latin American countries. Another method, also contrary 
to the practice of Mr. Wilson, was to withhold arms and 
munitions from insurrectionists. Twice in the first two years of 
Stimson's service the President imposed embargoes on the 
shipment of arms to revolutionaries. In 1929 the embargo was 
applied against Mexican rebels; the rebellion failed, and the 
embargo was generally applauded. In 1930, acting on exactly 
the same principles, the administration imposed a similar 
embargo against revolutionaries in Brazil, but this time the 
rebellion was almost immediately successful, and Stimson was 
widely criticized, first, for backing the wrong horse, and second, 



i8o ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

for "taking sides in civil strife." Both criticisms he considered 
wide of the mark. It was not the object of the United States 
to pick the winner in Latin American civil conflict, nor was 
it "taking sides" to withhold munitions from rebels. The Amer- 
ican policy, formally embodied in joint resolutions of the 
Congress in 191 a 5 and 1922 and in an inter- American treaty 
of 1928, was to give its recognition and support to the existing 
government and to embargo shipments to any rebel group 
whose formal belligerence had not been recognized. 6 This 
was a position which Stimson accepted and sustained with 
great vigor; he had an abiding dislike for the few Americans 
who chose to make money out of the dirty business of provid- 
ing weapons for revolutionaries. Both as United States At- 
torney in New York and as Secretary of War he had "per- 
sonally witnessed the activities by which some of our munitions 
manufacturers for sordid gain became- a veritable curse to the 
stability of our neighboring republics"; as United States 
Attorney, indeed, he had received the formal approval and 
thanks of Secretary of State Root for his action against the 
Americans engaged in that sordid traffic. 

"With these activities in mind," he continued, "I had little 
difficulty in reaching the conclusion that those who argued for 
the liberty of our munitions manufacturers to continue for 
profit a traffic which was staining with blood the soil of the 
Central American republics were not the progressives in inter- 
national law and practice." He preferred the policy of prompt 
embargo against rebels. "Until belligerency is recognized and 
until the duty of neutrality arises, all the humane predisposi- 
tions towards stability of government, the preservation of 
international amity, and the protection of established inter- 
course are in favor of the existing government." 7 This policy 
was one which Stimson had cause to advocate again a few years 
later on behalf of the mother country of Hispanic America. 

5 In the framing of the resolution . of 1912 Stimson shared as Secretary of War. 

6 Unfortunately for Stimson, when he imposed the embargo against the Brazilian 
rebels, he was not informed of the treaty of 1928. This oversight naturally produced 
"some rather nasty remarks" when he announced it in Cabinet, though he could properly 
say in reply that "even without the treaty I had acted rightly, which was a good deal 
better than if I had acted wrongly in the face of the treaty." (Diary, November 
7, 1930) 

7 Council Speech. 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 181 

A third general Latin American policy of the State Depart- 
ment in the Hoover administration was its refusal to use the 
authority and weight of the American Government on behalf 
of the financial interests of private citizens in Latin America. 
Stimson took his cue here from Elihu Root, whose words he 
quoted in a speech to the Army War College on January 5, 
1931. "He said, 'It has long been the established policy of 
the United States not to use its Army and Navy for the collec- 
tion of such debts.' By that he meant the debts owed by a 
foreign government to American citizens. He went on: 'We 
have not considered the use of force for such a purpose consist- 
ent with that honorable respect for the independent sovereignty 
of other members of the family of nations which is a most im- 
portant principle of international law and the chief protection 
of weak nations against oppression.' That has been, I think, 
a fair statement of the honorable position of this country 
in that particular matter." The same point was made with 
emphasis by Mr. Hoover in his inaugural address. When fla- 
grant injustice was done to American investors, the State De- 
partment, under Stimson as under those before and after him, 
was quite prepared to make diplomatic representations, but 
the "big stick" was not at the disposal of every citizen who 
had a claim in Latin America. 

This policy had already been followed by the State Depart- 
ment and by Ambassador Morrow in arranging a settlement 
of long-standing controversies with Mexico in 1928. It was 
followed by Stimson in 1929 in Cuba, when he refused to sup- 
port the claim of one Barlow against the Cuban Government. 
Barlow had friends in the Senate, and the Secretary of State 
was forced to defend his stand before the Senate Foreign 
Affairs Committee, but most of the Senators were friendly. 

Stimson received a less friendly response in the spring of 
1931 when he categorically refused to permit American forces 
to proceed into the interior of Nicaragua to protect American 
life and property endangered by raids of the outlaw followers 
of Sandino. "This Government," he announced, "cannot un- 
dertake the general protection of Americans throughout the 
country with American forces. To do so would lead to diffi- 
culties and commitments which this Government does not 



1 82 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

propose to undertake. . . . Those who remain do so at their 
own risk. . . ." This blunt announcement was widely criticized 
as a sudden reversal of the American position in Nicaragua, 
but Stimson stuck to his guns. And some bluntness \vas neces- 
sary, for "the American interests on the east coast have got to 
be so that they feel that they have a right to call for troops 
whenever any danger apprehends. In that way they are a 
pampered lot of people. . . ." (Diary, April 15, 1931) This 
was the sort of attitude which could not be permitted to grow 
unchecked ; it flew directly in the face of Stimson's announced 
intention to withdraw the marines from Nicaragua after the 
next election in 1932. Each intervention by American troops 
undermined the slowly growing capacity of the Nicaraguan 
Government to maintain order with its marine-trained forces. 
Fortunately, Stimson found that his refusal to protect Amer- 
ican business interests in the Nicaraguan interior was well re- 
ceived in Congress. 

The Nicaraguan policy announced in April, 1931, was gen- 
erally maintained both in that country and elsewhere through 
the next two years. Stimson reluctantly permitted naval vessels 
to proceed to ports where there was unrest, but he firmly 
opposed any extended police operations beyond those to which 
the Government was already committed in Haiti and Nica- 
ragua. Particularly after the beginning of the Far Eastern 
crisis in 1931 he was opposed to such action. It would be con- 
trary to his whole policy in Latin America, and it would also 
be used against him in the Far East. When he was asked by 
a visitor in Mkrch, 1932, whether he would land forces if they 
were needed to protect American interests in Chile and Colom- 
bia, "I told him not on your life; that if we landed a single 
soldier among those South Americans now, it would undo 
all the labor of three years, and it would put me in absolutely 
wrong in China, where Japan has done all of this monstrous 
work under the guise of protecting her nationals with a land- 
ing force." (Diary, March 7, 1932) 

Perhaps the most striking Latin American policy of the 
Hoover administration was its deliberate pursuit of noninter- 
vention in the sensitive Central American and Caribbean area. 
It was here that American policy in the past had given rise to 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 183 

especial fear and suspicion in Latin America. In a radio ad- 
dress on May 5, 1931, on "The Work of the State Depart- 
ment," Stimson pointed out that the development of sound 
inter-American relations had been retarded "by several his- 
toric sore spots which have been obstinately interfering with 
the growth of good will and friendly relations between us and 
our neighbors to the south. Bitter memories arising out of 
former differences with Mexico ; the occupation by our forces 
of Haiti under a treaty with that nation made in 1916; the 
presence of our marines in Nicaragua, though there at the 
request of her government and for the purpose of assisting 
her in the training of her constabulary, have all suffered dis- 
tortion in South America unwarranted by these events as we 
understand them. Each has been used by the enemies and critics 
of the United States as proof positive that we are an imperial- 
istic people prone to use our power in subverting the inde- 
pendence of our neighbors. And these accusations, however 
unjustifiable, have damaged our good name, our credit, and 
our trade far beyond the apprehension of our own people." 

The Mexican boil had been lanced by Dwight Morrow. It 
was further salved by prompt American support of the Mexi- 
can Government against armed rebellion in 1929. In Cuba 
Stimson repeatedly refused to intervene under the Platt 
Amendment; whatever the need for such intervention in the 
past, he believed that "the situation in Cuba ought to so 
develop that less and less pressure would be necessary on the 
part of the United States to keep matters straight." (Diary, 
.September 18, 1930) Stimson believed with Elihu Root that 
the Platt Amendment w-as "not intended to produce meddling 
in the internal affairs of Cuba," and he neither opposed nor 
gave special support to the government of President Machado. 

In Nicaragua the general peace established by Stimson's 
mission of 1929 continued throughout his term as Secretary of 
State, punctuated only by sporadic outbreaks from the bandit 
Sandino; these outbreaks served to prove Sandino a skillful 
guerrilla, but in their violence and irresponsibility they also 
helped to destroy his reputation as a great patriot. They did 
not divert Stimson from a firm determination to get American 
marines out of Nicaragua, and after the United States had 



1 84 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

kept its pledge to hold a second fair and free election in 1932, 
the marines were duly withdrawn. 

In Haiti, following the recommendation of a commission led 
by Cameron Forbes and including as a very active member 
William Allen White, the State Department undertook the 
liquidation of the work begun by President Wilson and his 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt. 8 Stimson 
was more pessimistic about the future of Haiti than about that 
of his own experiment in Nicaragua, but he was bound to 
admit in 1932 and early 1933 that the Haitians were doing bet- 
ter than he had expected. The withdrawal planned by the 
Hoover administration was completed in 1934 by its successor ; 
Mr. Roosevelt accomplished in an executive agreement what 
Mr. Hoover had tried to do in a treaty that went unratified. 

All these actions were examples of a shift in policy which 
Stimson considered a natural development in maturing Amer- 
ican history the abandonment. of the so-called Roosevelt cor- 
ollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Theodore Roosevelt had 
believed it necessary, in both international politics and inter- 
national law, that the American denial of any European 
right to intervene should imply the duty of the United States 
to intervene herself whenever a Latin American government 
was wholly unable to meet its foreign obligations. This was 
the policy which had brought American marines to Nicaragua, 
an American-written .constitution to Haiti, and American cus- 
toms collectors to the Dominican Republic. The marines, the 
constitution, and the collector of customs were all honestly 
intended to serve the best interests of the country to which they 
were sent, and they all did good service. But they were Amer- 
ican, foreign, Yanqui, and as time passed they aroused more 
resentment than they did gratitude. So at the end of the 
Coolidge administration, in a long memorandum by J. Reuben 
Clark, the State Department abandoned Theodore Roose- 
velt's corollary; the memorandum was duly published under 
Stimson in March, 1930, and Stimson himself asserted the 
Monroe Doctrine in terms which excluded intervention even 

8 In early 1933, when Stimson made his first visit to Franklin Roosevelt, he heard 
a high-spirited account of his new friend's early work in writing the Constitution of 
Haiti. 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 185 

with the best intentions : "The Monroe Doctrine was a declara- 
tion of the United States versus Europe not of the United 
States versus Latin America." 9 Stimson always believed that 
the American record in Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Nicaragua 
was on balance a credit to the United States, but he recognized 
that the rising nationalism of Latin America, aided and abetted 
by uninformed and captious criticism in the United States, had 
made it time to retire. 

The American nations are strong on conferences and com- 
missions, and the Hoover administration bore its share of this 
burden. Mr. Hoover's greatest personal triumph in this field 
was his settlement of the long-standing Tacna-Arica dispute 
in which Stimson had been counsel to the State Department 
three years before. The ugly issues between Colombia and 
Peru in Leticia, and between Bolivia and Paraguay in the 
Chaco, had the constant and devoted attention of Francis 
White, who sought with endless patience and good will to 
use American good offices to end these disputes, but without 
success. The Letician affair was finally settled by the League 
of Nations, but the Chaco became the scene of the first de- 
clared war in the Western Hemisphere in the twentieth cen- 
tury. In all these cases the United States was careful to avoid 
any heavy-handed action, and occasionally Stimson was an- 
noyed by his own restraint. "I am getting quite blue over the 
bad way in which all Latin America is showing up. It seems 
as if there is nothing we could count on so far as their having 
any courage and independence is concerned, and yet if we try 
to take the lead for them, at once there is a cry against Ameri- 
can domination and imperialism." (Diary, November n, 
1932) He had the satisfaction in August, 1932, of seeing the 
Latin American republics adopt his doctrine of nonrecogni- 
tion of territorial conquest, but the doctrine did not in the end 
restrain the Bolivians and Paraguayans from a particularly 
senseless war. 

The Latin American policy of the Hoover administration 
was overshadowed after the middle of 1931, first by the eco- 
nomic crisis in Europe, and then by the political crisis in 
Asia. But when Stimson came to the end of his term as Secre- 

9 Council Speech. 



1 86 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

tary of State, and cast up his accounts in an article for Foreign 
Affairs?" he found that the Latin American policy he had 
pursued under Mr. Hoover was the best available example 
of "the fundamental purposes and philosophy of this adminis- 
tration" in foreign affairs. "It has not hesitated to impose 
upon itself, in the interest of the development of the peace of 
the world, the same standards which it has insisted upon in 
respect to the world at large. It has not allowed the pre- 
ponderance of the material and military power of the United 
States in this hemisphere to prescribe a different rule of 
conduct here from that which it has believed to be necessary 
to the development of peaceful relations elsewhere through- 
out the world. This has been true in spite of the fact that one 
of the localities which has called for the exercise of these 
principles has been the one spot external to our shores which 
nature has decreed to be most vital to our national safety, not 
to mention our prosperity, namely, the narrow isthmus of 
Central America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea com- 
manding the entrance to the Panama Canal, that vital link in 
our national defense. 

"From the beginning, Mr. Hoover's administration has 
been determined to better the relationship of the Government 
with our Latin American neighbors. We have sought to make 
our policy towards them so clear in its implications of justice 
and good will, in its avoidance of anything which could be 
even misconstrued into a policy of forceful intervention or a 
desire for exploitation of those republics and their citizens, as 
to reassure the most timid or suspicious among them. We have 
been withdrawing our marines as rapidly as possible from 
Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Nicaragua, completing in the 
last-named country, amid the grateful recognition of all its 
parties, a successful educational experiment in the funda- 
mentals of self-government in the shape of free elections. We 
have redeclared once again our national policy against the 
use of military pressure to collect business debts in foreign 
countries. We have promptly lent friendly assistance per- 
mitted by international law to the Mexican Government in 

10 "Bases of American Foreign Policy during the Past Four Years," Foreign Affairs, 
April, 1933. 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 187 

quelling a military revolt against its authority. We have re- 
established the sensible practice of our forefathers as to the 
recognition of new governments in conformity with their 
rights to regulate their own internal affairs, and, in view of 
the economic depression and the consequent need for prompt 
measures of financial stabilization, have accorded to them 
recognition under this policy with as little delay as possible 
in order to give them the quickest possible opportunities for 
recovering their economic poise. We have co-operated with 
the Latin American states in their efforts to restore peace 
among their numbers in the Chaco and on the Amazon. We 
have completed the settlement of Tacna-Arica. And in social 
and intellectual ways we have endeavored to establish the 
nations of Latin America as our associates and our friends in 
intellectual and commercial intercourse. Mr. Hoover, as Presi- 
dent-elect, visited them in a journey through South America 
for the very purpose of dissipating the fears and antagonisms 
which had grown up amongst some of them as to the intentions 
and policies of this Government. Subsequently, we have enter- 
tained as national guests the Presidents-elect of Mexico, 
Brazil, and Colombia. We have enlisted our great institutions 
in the undertaking of systematic intellectual exchange with 
them ; and together with them the United States has become 
officially represented in many world conferences upon scien- 
tific and welfare advancement. These acts have all been de- 
signed to impress them, as well as the other nations of the 
world, that the United States is aiming for progress by the 
creation of good will and human advancement, and not by 
exploitation." 

The London Treaty and Latin American policy were typ- 
ical constructive undertakings of the sort that Stimson had 
anticipated when he left Manila in March, 1929. Taken to- 
gether, they represented a substantial achievement for his 
first two years. But these two years are separated by the two 
that followed as light is separated from darkness, and we shall 
do well to stop here for a last look at the situation of the world 
as it appeared from the State Department between 1929 and 



1 88 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

These were the last two years of Stimson's life in which he 
was able to think of peace as reasonably well assured, and 
international good will as something more than a brave hope. 
In later years he remained a believer in the ideal of peace and 
the objective of good will, but after 1931 he faced, with all 
other men of good will, the lengthening shadow of rising law- 
lessness among the nations. Even in 1931 the great depression 
had begun to overturn governments and rekindle ancient 
grievances, but in the early months of that year it still seemed 
possible that the postwar settlement might not be seriously 
shaken. 

These two years were years of peace and trust, and Stimson 
adopted as his guide in foreign policy a principle he always 
tried to follow in personal relations the principle that the 
way to make men trustworthy is to trust them. In this spirit 
he made one decision for which he was later severely criti- 
cized: he closed down the so-called Black Chamber the 
State Department's code-cracking office. This act he never 
regretted. In later years he was to permit and indeed en- 
courage similar labors in another Department, but in later 
years the situation was different. In 1929 the world was striv- 
ing with good will for lasting peace, and in this effort all the 
nations were parties. Stimson, as Secretary of State, was deal- 
ing as a gentleman with the gentlemen sent as ambassadors and 
ministers from friendly nations, and, as he later said, 'Gentle- 
men do not read each other's mail. 5 

In a similar spirit, the spirit of peacemaking and mutual 
good will, Stimson had made one other move which brought 
him some criticism. In the summer of 1929 a serious issue 
arose between China and Soviet Russia over their conflicting 
interests and rights in North Manchuria. In the course of this 
dispute the Russians sent troops into Chinese territory, and for 
a time there seemed to be danger of either war or annexation. 
Stimson, undismayed by the fact that the United States had 
no diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, took the lead in 
organizing an international demarche invoking the Kellogg- 
Briand Pact and pleading with both nations to avoid a breach 
of the pact, and of the peace. This demarche greatly annoyed 
the Russians, whose self-righteousness in foreign affairs makes 



CONSTRUCTIVE BEGINNINGS 189 

that of all other nations seem mild indeed, but it was notable 
that their troops were quickly withdrawn and a peaceful settle- 
ment was reached. The Kellogg-Briand Pact and Stimson's 
initiative may have had very little to do with this gratifying 
result, but the fact that the peace was kept seemed encourag- 
ing at the time. It was the first invocation of the pact, and 
from its apparent success believers in the new order of peace 
took courage. 

It was only in 1931 that the weakness of the economic and 
political underpinnings of the postwar peace began to make 
itself apparent. Almost overnight, in May, 1931, the whole 
tenor of the State Department's work and of Stimson's own 
activities was radically changed. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Beginnings of Disaster 



I. BEFORE THE STORM 

FIVE times in Stimson's life a turning point in the world's 
affairs coincided with a drastic change in his own personal 
activity. The first was in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt with 
noble motives wrecked the Republican party as Stimson had 
known it. The second was in 1917, when war came to him as 
to millions of other Americans. The last two were 1940 and 
1945; in the former year a desperate crisis gave him a new 
opportunity for activity; in the latter decisive victory released 
him to retirement. The third time was in 1931. 

To Arnold Toynbee, writing a few months later of the 
shrunken hopes and bloated fears resulting from that year's 
events, 1931 was the annus terribilis of the postwar era. 1 In 
1931 three terrible facts in deadly series made themselves ap- 
parent. First the rising storm of a world-wide depression 
knocked down the postwar financial system as a willful child 
knocks down a file of tin soldiers by toppling the little fel- 
low in the rear rank. Second, in an outburst stimulated by suf- 
fering, and deriving strength from the apparent failures of 
peaceful leadership, the military leaders of Japan undertook 
a major adventure in aggression. Third, and most terrible of 
all, it soon became clear that the climate of opinion in Amer- 
ica was such that the American Government, in responding 
to this double challenge, could do no more than dull the 

1 Arnold J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1931, Oxford University Tress, 
1932. This Annual survey remains the best general work available for the period 1929- 
1933 and it has been heavily drawn upon in this and following chapters. Stimson 
himself used it often in later years when he had occasion to consider the events of 
his service as Secretary of State. 



190 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 191 

sharpest edges of economic disaster and military aggression. 
Though the roots of failure were deep in earlier years, and 
the hope of success not dead for years afterward, it was not 
hard for Stimson, in 1947, to endorse the view of 1931 that 
Toynbee had so early taken. It was the year in which the peace 
of 1919 was challenged and found wanting. 

By the nature of his office, Stimson was of all Americans 
the man most closely and continuously affected by these 
events. Second only to the President, he was the responsible 
spokesman and leader of the United States in foreign affairs, 
and Mr. Hoover in 1931 and afterward w r as overwhelmingly 
occupied in his struggle against economic catastrophe at 
home. 

Looking back at this period, Stimson reluctantly concluded 
that he had salvaged very little from the storm except per- 
haps the honor of his country, so far as honor can be saved by 
words. But he was not disposed to accept the blame for this 
result; from 1931 to 1933 the American Secretary of State 
was the servant of events, and not their master. And both in 
minor victories and in major defeats Stimson, as he looked 
back in 1947, found the American record far from barren; 
he felt that at least the State Department had fought on the 
right side. And in those two crowded, bitter, almost disheart- 
ening years he saw many lessons that he was eager in 1947 to 
share with others. 

In order to make clear the nature of his experience and the 
setting in which he worked, we must begin with a summary of 
his position in the early months of 1931, just before the storm 
broke. 

The winter and spring of 1931 were months of change in 
the senior staff of the State Department. It was as if Stimson, 
knowing there was trouble ahead, had reorganized his De- 
partment in preparation. But one change was no part of any 
plan. On March 10, after a prolonged and gallant struggle, 
Under Secretary Cotton died. This was an irreparable loss. 
Joe Cotton had possessed exactly the kind of courage that 
Stimson needed in his first assistant the courage to talk back, 
and the courage to support his chief even when it was politic 
to stand aloof. With Cotton in the State Department, Stimson 



192 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

had been able to stay three months in London at the Naval 
Conference with complete certainty that a first-rate man was 
boldly and responsibly doing what he believed Stimson would 
want done. After Cotton's death, when he was again abroad 
on major missions, Stimson was never able to feel this sort of 
confidence in the Acting Secretary. William R. Castle, the 
man who replaced Cotton, was not Stimson's choice; though 
he had ability and wide experience, he did not share Stimson's 
basic attitudes as Cotton had. The selection of Castle was 
a mistake which Stimson often regretted. The two men were 
not fitted to make a team. And although the choice was 
one strongly urged by the President, Stimson could not on 
that account acquit himself of an administrative blunder. 
All he could claim was that he learned from his mistake, 
and twelve years later a relatively innocuous and probably 
inadvertent piece of interference in departmental assign- 
ments from a different President produced an instant offer of 
resignation. From his experience in the State Department 
Stimson developed a rule which he later applied with com- 
plete fidelity. He would freely recognize the right of the Pres- 
ident to veto any proposed appointments to major positions, 
but he would vigorously oppose any attempt to select his sub- 
ordinates for him. 

Fortunately, during this same period in the State Depart- 
ment Stimson was acquiring a group of other assistants who 
served him with distinction in the following years. The first 
step had been taken the previous November, with the appoint- 
ment of Allen T. Klots as special assistant to the Secretary. 
Klots was the son of a Yale classmate, and for nearly thirty 
years he and Stimson had been extremely close to each other. 
Klots had made a distinguished record in college, in war, and 
in Winthrop & Stimson. He served Stimson in Washington 
as the young lawyer serves a senior counsel his assignments 
were as varied as Stimson's own. 

A second major new assistant was James Grafton Rogers, 
appointed in February to fill a position long vacant as Assistant 
Secretary of State. Rogers was a Westerner, the only one who 
ever served on any of Stimson's administrative staffs. His 
origin was a political advantage, but it was for himself that 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 193 

Stimson valued him. He had great energy and ability, and his 
gusty wit was a major source of relief from the dismal burden 
of State Department duties. Rogers became Stimson's constant 
adviser, at first largely on legal questions and later on matters 
of major policy. More than any other individual, he took the 
place of Cotton. 

Two more important additions were made in April and 
May. Cotton's death had left the Department without a senior 
officer experienced in economic matters. To remedy this weak- 
ness Stimson appointed Harvey H. Bundy, a Boston lawyer 
with experience in finance, as Assistant Secretary, and Herbert 
Feis, a distinguished New York economist, as Economic Ad- 
viser to the Secretary. He never regretted either appointment. 
Bundy was assigned at first to the complicated questions of 
policy involved in defaulted foreign loans of American pri- 
vate investors and later to the broader problems of war debts. 
Feis became Stimson's primary source of economic counsel 
in all phases of foreign affairs he was the only man appointed 
by Stimson who was retained in office by the next administra- 
tion. 

With these four appointments Stimson rounded out the team 
with which he served through his last two testing years as 
Secretary of State. The new men ably supplemented those 
whom he had with him already. Captain Eugene Regnier, 
who had been with him in the Philippines, remained at his 
side as the perfect aide, and something more. In the complex 
problems of entertainment and protocol which are inevitable 
in the State Department he was invaluable, and his intimate 
counsel was important in wider fields. Assistant Secretary 
White remained in charge of Latin America, and the ad- 
ministrative direction of the Department and the foreign ser- 
vice continued to rest in the experienced and skillful hands of 
Assistant Secretary Wilbur J. Carr. 

Under Castle in policy and Carr in administration, the State 
Department's career officers at home and abroad executed 
their regular assignments with their accustomed skill and de- 
votion. It is the habit of many Americans to assume that their 
foreign service does not match that of other nations. Stimson 
by 1931 was persuaded that this view was wholly wrong, and 



194 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the events of the next two years reinforced him in the convic- 
tion that American professional diplomats were at least as 
good as any in the world their difficulty was that their coun- 
try seldom supported them with effective policies. 

In his last two years Stimson relied heavily on this powerful 
and well-balanced team, and it was not the fault of his as- 
sociates that he never was able to look back at the State De- 
partment with the same sense of reminiscent satisfaction that 
he felt when he recalled the Federal Building in New York, 
or Malacanan Palace, or, later, the Pentagon Building. The 
team was a good one, but it was forced to fight a losing battle. 

It was characteristic of the period that Stimson's State De- 
partment assistants were assembled with far greater difficulty 
than any of his other staffs, with the possible exception of his 
small group of American advisers in the Philippines. The 
difficulty in the Philippines was natural and understandable ; 
the tradition of colonial service was never very strong in the 
United States, and 1928 was not a year in which many Ameri- 
cans were eager to travel 8,000 miles to participate in an un- 
certain experiment. But Stimson was surprised and a little 
disappointed to find that many first-rate men would not come 
even as far as Washington to serve as his major assistants. 
There was no dearth of men who wanted to be Assistant Sec- 
retary of State; but, in one of Stimson's favorite phrases, the 
men who made themselves applicants were usually men who 
were thinking 'what the job would do for them,' and he was 
hunting for men whose first interest was 'what they could do 
for the job.' Bundy and Feis were appointed only after other 
men more familiar to Stimson had regretfully refused to serve. 
It was true that 1931 was a year in which many an outstanding 
younger man in the business or professional world of New 
York was hard pressed to protect his family and his career, 
and Stimson never presumed to judge any individual's de- 
cision. But taken together, the series of refusals he received 
was indicative of the preoccupation of able men in 1931 with 
their own affairs ; the needs of the nation, and the world, were 
given second rank. The usual reluctance of private citizens 
of standing and ability to become entangled with government 
was intensified in 1931 by the economic depression and the 
evident difficulties faced by an administration which lacked 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 195 

congressional support. And as he pleaded with the men he 
wanted, Stimson had neither the crusading spirit of Theodore 
Roosevelt's day nor the overriding appeal of national defense 
to assist him. Yet events were to demonstrate that there were 
few periods in which the American State Department had 
greater need for talented officers than 1931 and 1932, and al- 
though Stimson in the end obtained men whom he would not 
for a moment have traded of? for others, it was only after 
prolonged labor and much lost time that he got them. If it had 
not been for the devoted and constant searches of Frankfurter, 
Roberts, and Klots, he might have had to wait indefinitely. 

And he was saddened to observe in 1947, as the war atmos- 
phere died away, that his successors in Cabinet office were 
having similar trouble. The labor of disinterested Government 
service, and the financial sacrifice which it involved, seemed 
to fall upon a relatively small group of men. To Stimson this 
was doubly unfortunate it meant that many able men never 
gave any return of public service to their country ; it also meant 
that men who ought to be permitted respite in private life, for 
the pursuit of their chosen profession and the repair of finances 
damaged by Government salaries, were overworked and pena- 
lized by their own conscientious response to calls for help. 

If the depression was a contributing difficulty in Stimson's 
search for able subordinates, it was an even greater element 
in his relationship with Mr. Hoover. To Stimson it always 
seemed that there were few loyalties more binding than that 
of a Cabinet officer to his chief, and that no obligation was 
more compelling than that of respect for the President of the 
United States. It is therefore somewhat difficult to report 
clearly and properly the deep divisions of both principle and 
attitude which developed in the last two years of the Hoover 
administration between the President and his Secretary of 
State. The matter is not made easier by the fact that Stimson's 
personal admiration and affection for Herbert Hoover were 
never greater than in 1947. Mr. Hoover was to him one of the 
great Americans of his time, and one of the most unjustly ma- 
ligned. It was of the greatest importance to him, therefore, 
that no words of his should be taken as a new source for unfair 
criticism. 

At the same time Mr. Hoover and Stimson always did each 



196 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

other the honor of frankness, and their differences were can- 
didly recognized by both men. Both understood that Mr. 
Hoover's views would always be controlling, and neither al- 
lowed, differences of opinion to do more than cause occasional 
very short-lived outbursts of temper. No record of Stimson's 
service as Secretary of State would be remotely accurate with- 
out a frank recognition of their differences, and no statement of 
Stimson's opinions would be fair to Mr. Hoover if it were to 
give the impression that he shared them all. 

Temperamentally Stimson and Mr. Hoover were wholly 
different. One was by nature and training an advocate and a 
fighter; the other was an organizer and planner. Mr. Hoover 
liked to calculate his moves as he would the building of a 
bridge, while Stimson preferred to choose his main objective 
and then charge ahead without worrying, confident that ag- 
gressive executive leadership would win followers. Neither 
method was entitled to any special credit over the other, and 
successful presidents have used both. But Mr. Hoover and 
Stimson were unusually one-sided in their respective prefer- 
ences. To Stimson Mr. Hoover's habit of considering his prob- 
lem from all angles often seemed to be nothing but a prefer- 
ence for "seeing the dark side first" j he constantly felt that 
Mr. Hoover gave himself unnecessary trouble by his willing- 
ness to fret over hostile criticism. "I do- wish he could shield 
himself against listening to so much rumor and criticism. If 
he would only walk out his own way and not worry over what 
his enemies say, it would make matters so much easier. . . . 
He generally comes out right, but he wastes an enormous 
amount of nerve tissue and anxiety on these interruptions." 
(Diary, December 4, 1930) In Stimson's view, this concern 
over what others thought tended to deprive Mr. Hoover of 
the greatest asset of an American President the right of 
leadership. 

And there was a further difference in temperament, impor- 
tant beyond its appearance. Mr. Hoover was a worker, capable 
of more intense and prolonged intellectual effort than any 
other man Stimson ever met; his cure for all his troubles as 
President was more and harder work. Stimson was not made 
that way; his strength depended on regular rest, substantial 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 197 

vacations, and constant physical exercise, nor did he accept 
as suitable exercise Mr. Hoover's game of medicine ball 
it seemed to him as dull as weight lifting, and about as refresh- 
ing. More and more after the middle of 1930 Stimson found 
himself oppressed by the official atmosphere of Washington. 
It was not just the depression it was the way the administra- 
tion allowed itself to become absorbed in a fog of gloom. Mr. 
Hoover was fighting hard in a great battle, but there was no 
zest anywhere. 

Stimson found ways to escape from this atmosphere. With- 
out escape he could not have lasted out his term. After 1929 
he had some weeks of real vacation each summer, and in 
Washington he was able to get much refreshment from horse- 
back riding and deck tennis. And he found encouragement 
and lightness of spirit in one further quarter occasional visits 
to Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Justice Holmes had 
precisely the spirit which Stimson missed in his official work. 
The diary entry of November I, 1930, contains a delighted 
four-page entry on a visit to Holmes, of which the following 
are extracts : 

"Then after I had a ride on horseback, I dropped in to see 
Justice Holmes. I felt that I needed something to cure my 
staleness. It has been dreadfully dull and stale, nothing but 
work . . . and the ever present feeling of gloom that pervades 
everything connected with the administration. I really never 
knew such unenlivened occasions as our Cabinet meetings. 
When I sat down today and tried to think it over, I don't re- 
member that there has ever been a joke cracked in a single 
meeting of the last year and a half, nothing but steady, serious 
grind. ... I am afraid I am too much of a loafer and enjoy 
my recreation too much to be able to stand this thing per- 
petually. 

"With the staleness arising from the situation, I went to 
Justice Holmes to liven me up, and I had the most delightful 
talk that I have enjoyed for a month of Sundays. Holmes is the 
last of the old Roosevelt familiars, who is alive and in this 
town, and it was a joy to talk with him. He is ninety years old 
and gives no sign of it in his liveliness and vigor. He still 
swears like a trooper, enjoys a joke and makes plenty of them, 



198 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

full of the life and vigor that he used to have. . . . He told 
me that he had been having a rather unsuccessful summer so 
far as self-improvement was concerned. . . . He said 'the 
fact of the matter is that I am at last getting a little old. 5 I told 
him that was nonsense while he was thinking of self- 
improvement. 

"I told him about Mr. Root's experience at his reunion, 
when he told me that if he found anybody who looked decrepit, 
with a long white beard and white hair, going around bent 
over a stick, you may be sure that that man had lived in the 
country all his life without any strain; that he was probably 
a college professor, and that he had led a perfectly blameless 
life, following every hygienic rule. While on the other hand, 
when he found one of his classmates who was vigorous, keen, 
and interested in everything going around, you can bet that he 
had lived in the city and had violated every rule of health all 
his life. Justice Holmes laughed and said, 'Good Lord, that's 
just it. I remember now a time many years ago, the last time I 
went to the reunion of the Class of '61, and I went into the 
room and looked around and said, "Good Lord, are these my 
contemporaries?" ' and he said, 'I fled and took refuge in the 
Porcellian Club.' 

"He told me that he had been trying to keep up his reading 
of philosophy. . . . He said, 'You know I can't take man 
quite so seriously as these other fellows do. It seems to me that 
he can't quite occupy the attention of God that they all think he 
does. I can't believe that if a comet, for instance, should hit 
the earth and knock it to smithereens that it would make such 
a very great difference to the universe.' And then he talked of 
his old arguments with Josiah Royce. He laughed and laughed 
over them. He said that the trouble with Royce was that when- 
ever he, Holmes, got him cornered, he would take refuge in 
saying, 'Well, I am in the bosom of God' ; while Holmes would 
reply, 'Nonsense, you are just in a rathole that I have cornered 
you in.' I told him that I remembered Royce as having written 
a book entitled, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, and I 
heard the story that when old Professor Shaler met Royce the 
first time after he had read it and Royce asked him how he had 
liked the book, Shaler said that it had the wrong title, it ought 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 199 

to be called, The Irreligious Aspect of Philosophy. . . . Alto- 
gether we had a wonderful half-hour's talk. When I went 
away, he looked at my riding clothes and said, 'Good Lord, 
how I envy you. You know I never rode a horse except during 
the Civil War while I was on the Staff, and I had to ride 
then for the sake of my position.' 

"I came away completely cheered up with my horizon all 
changed, and it has given me a pretty clear idea of what I 
needed, which is a little more recreation and change from the 
unvarying attitude of grind and business that I get in the ad- 
ministration. How I wish that I could cheer up the . . . 
President and make him feel the importance of a little bright- 
ness and recreation in his own work. But after all I suppose he 
would reply and say that he gets his recreation in his own way, 
and that my way would not suit him at all. I came home and 
had dinner with Mabel. . . . We spent the evening reading 
together, and then, for the first time in some days, I got a 
good long night's sleep." 

In addition to differences of temperament, there were major 
latent differences of policy between Mr. Hoover and Stimson. 
In 1929 and 1930 these were concealed ; they did not affect the 
major problems of those years in Latin American affairs and 
naval limitation the two men were almost always in cordial 
and complete agreement. But in the later years nearly every 
major issue produced an important cleavage. The basic differ- 
ence was one between two men who were both deeply devoted 
to peace, but in such opposite ways that in the end, when the 
troubles of their time in office ripened into World War II, 
Stimson was one of the earliest and most ardent advocates of 
the necessity of American action to prevent victory by the 
aggressor, while Mr. Hoover, until Pearl Harbor, was con- 
vinced that the United States could and should remain aloof. 
This basic difference expressed itself in many forms; it was 
at the root of disagreements over war debts, the Far East, 
disarmament, and "foreign entanglements." 

The story of Stimson's last two years in office is in very 
large degree the story of his efforts to combine loyalty to Mr. 
Hoover with the advancement of policies which only too often 
went against the grain of the President's deepest convictions. 



200 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

In every case of direct conflict, Stimson followed Mr. Hoover's 
wishes, and time and again he acted as public advocate for 
courses which his own fundamental principles could hardly 
have justified. Occasionally he was even persuaded, by forces 
which every lawyer loyal to his clients will understand, into 
a genuine belief in policies that later seemed to him insufficient 
and even wrong. It is not surprising that under such conflict- 
ing pressures he should have found these years the least happy 
of his public career. 

But in some degree these differences with Mr. Hoover were 
merely the reflection of a still greater difficulty the attitude 
of the people of the United States. Often the President's re- 
straining hand was the result less of his personal convictions 
than of his necessary awareness of the state of public opinion, 
to which as an elected official seeking re-election he was neces- 
sarily more sensitive than Stimson, just as in his preoccupation 
with domestic troubles he was perhaps less struck than Stimson 
by the magnitude of the world's crisis. Mr. Hoover was a non- 
interventionist always, but he was never a full-blown isolation- 
ist; this could not be said of public opinion in America in the 
early i93o's. Stimson often repeated in later years a remark 
made to him by Ogden Mills in 1932 that never in history 
had the American people been so profoundly isolationist. Not 
merely were they thoroughly disillusioned about Europe and 
the Europeans, but they were completely occupied by pressing 
domestic troubles in which no foreign policy 'seemed to be 
important or even relevant. To a greater degree even than in 
1923, when George Harvey coined the phrase, the policy of 
the ordinary American, as distinct from that of his State De- 
partment, was "to have no foreign policy." 

It was on such a people, with such leaders, that the storm of 
world catastrophe broke in May, 1931, when a bank in Austria 
failed. 

2. ECONOMIC CRISIS IN EUROPE 

This book is clearly not the place for a detailed analysis of 
the causes of the world-wide economic depression which began 
in 1929 and dominated world affairs in 1931 and 1932. A 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 201 

catastrophe compounded of so many elements, and subject to 
so many partisan explanations, cannot be analyzed in a few 
pages and certainly not here. Stimson was never an expert 
in economics ; he took his advice in this field from men whose 
judgment he had learned to trust, and he almost always avoided 
categorical conclusions about the course of economic affairs. 
His diary in the State Department years is crowded with 
reports of what other men thought about the depression what 
caused it and how long it would last but it contains almost 
no expression of definite opinions of his own. 

But as it presented itself in the late spring and summer of 
1931, the international depression was no longer merely eco- 
nomic; it had begun to produce results which were of major 
importance politically. It is usual to date this political crisis 
from the collapse of the Credit-Anstalt, the largest bank in 
Austria, in May, 1931. In the European financial system of 
the time, weakened by the declining capital values and the 
increasingly immobile assets characteristic of depressions, the 
failure of the Credit-Anstalt was the blow which precipitated 
a general financial panic. Throughout Central Europe, and 
particularly in Austria and Germany, there began a vast inter- 
national run on the banks. Creditors outside these countries. 

i / 

fearful of a total loss of their assets, were wholly undeterred 
by the ordinary measures designed to restrict such credit trans- 
actions. A discount rate of 6 or 7 per cent was negligible when 
measured against the threat of total loss. 

Withdrawals of credit from Germany began in May and 
became torrential in the early weeks of June. It was apparent 
that unless something was done quickly, Germany would once 
more slide down the inclined plane of inflation to financial 
ruin. Such an event, at such a time, would have had the most 
serious effects on the political stability of Europe, almost cer- 
tainly producing an upheaval within Germany and a repudi- 
ation or indefinite postponement of all foreign payments. Even 
the most isolationist of Americans could not view such a pros- 
pect with equanimity, for American banks and financial inter- 
ests throughout the country were heavily involved in large 
credits to Germany which had been advanced during the boom 



202 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

years ; any general German collapse would have violent eco- 
nomic repercussions at home, and not on banks alone. 

It was in these circumstances that Mr. Hoover, on June 20, 
announced his famous plan for a one-year moratorium on all 
intergovernmental debts. The immediate purpose of this pro- 
posal was to strengthen Germany's credit position by relieving 
her of reparation payments ; its broader purpose was to give 
the whole Western world a "shot in the arm." It was the bold- 
est and most constructive step taken by the United States in 
its dealings with Europe since 1918. Tragically, it was not 
nearly enough. 

Debts between governments in 1931 were of two major kinds 
both resulting from the First World War. On the one hand 
there were the reparations owed by Germany to the victorious 
Allied and Associated Powers ; in those reparations the United 
States had refused to share. The amount of the reparations 
and the time schedule of their payment had been the subject 
of repeated international discussions in the 1920'$; in these 
discussions a notable part had been played by Americans like 
Charles G. Dawes and Owen D. Young, whose names had 
been given to successive plans for payment. But these Amer- 
icans had participated solely as private citizens ; the American 
Government had from the beginning refused to take any of- 
ficial part in the discussions of reparations. So strong was this 
feeling that one of Stimson's first official actions as Secretary 
of State had been to sign and send off a message written by 
others which he later recognized to be quite ungracious in its 
expressions of the danger of official entanglement in Young's 
work. It was American policy to regard reparations almost as 
"tainted gold." 

The other half of the burden of intergovernmental debts 
was regarded by the United States in a wholly different light. 
The "war debts" were owed mainly by Allied nations and 
mainly to the United States. They had arisen from loans made 
by the American Government after its entry into the war, and 
from further loans made for reconstruction in the immediate 
postwar years. The total amount loaned was about ten billion 
dollars. The amount of these debts had been considerably re- 
duced by negotiations between 1923 and 1926; the American 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 203 

Government, adhering to its view that all war debts were 
normal obligations of a debtor to a creditor, had negotiated 
settlements based on the "capacity to pay" of each debtor gov- 
ernment. 

In addition to these two major elements in the structure of 
intergovernmental debts, there were very considerable pay- 
ments due to Great Britain and France, who had been bankers 
for the Allied nations before the American entry into the war 
and middlemen in the flow of credits even after 1917. There 
were other smaller debts between other nations. But the main 
current of international payments under the agreements effec- 
tive in 1931 was from Germany in reparations to the European 
Allies, and from these nations in debt payments to the United 
States. In June, 1931, the schedule for the following year 
involved net payments by Germany of something under four 
hundred million dollars. Nearly two-thirds of this flow of pay- 
ments would go through to the United States in payments of 
interest and principal on the war debts. Two-thirds of the 
remainder would wind up in France, which was the only 
other substantial net creditor. Economically, the significant 
course of intergovernmental debt payments was from Germany 
to the United States and France. Other nations were either 
insignificant or, as in the case of Great Britain, merely way- 
stations on the road the British would receive from France 
and Germany almost exactly what they would pay to the United 
States. 

It was generally agreed in international financial circles, 
in the spring of 1931, that the continuance unaltered of repara- 
tion and debt payments on the scheduled scale would be impos- 
sible. The nations were thus confronted with the possibility 
of a repetition of the political crisis of 1923, when German 
failure to make reparation payments had resulted in French 
occupation of the Ruhr. Or alternatively, if the Germans did 
continue to make such payments as were unconditionally 
required, it was quite likely that they would be bankrupted. 
Nor was Germany the only country in financial difficulty. 
However much the American Government might insist that 
reparations and war debts had no connection with each other, 
no nation in debt to the United States was likely to keep up its 



204 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

payments if the compensating flow of reparations from Ger- 
many should cease. A general default of intergovernmental 
debts seriously threatened. Such a default would undermine 
every tendency toward recovery and accentuate every force 
making for deeper depression. 

The plan unfolded by President Hoover to Stimson and to 
Mellon and Mills of the Treasury in early June had the direct- 
ness and simplicity of high politics. The United States, as the 
largest creditor, would propose a holiday on all payments of 
intergovernmental' debts. The debts would simply be forgotten 
for a year, perhaps two. Stimson listened with delight while 
Mr. Hoover propounded a doctrine which he had always 
liked: "It involved a bold emphatic proposition to assume 
leadership himself, and I, myself, felt more glad than I could 
say that he was at last turning that way. . . . He told me that 
he always believed in going out to meet a situation rather than 
to let it come. . . . Altogether it was one of the most satis- 
factory talks I have had with him in a long time." (Diary, 
June 5, 1931) 

The two weeks that followed were among the most crowded 
and exciting of any in Stimson's life. "We have all been saying 
to each other that the situation is quite like war." (Diary, June 
J 5> I 93 I ) The front was in Central Europe, and with each 
day that passed the news was worse and the need for action 
more apparent. This was fortunate, for during the days be- 
tween June 5 and June 18 Mr. Hoover exhibited every day his 
capacity for "seeing the dark side." Though the proposal for 
a moratorium was his own, and its eventual execution was to 
be his personal triumph, he daily found more reasons for 
expecting failure in his plan. On June 8 he was worried 
because a moratorium might appear to connect war debts with 
reparations, and he and Stimson had an argument about it, 
the latter urging that "even legally, in domestic law, as soon 
as a man became insolvent he and his creditors could not make 
independent arrangements about their debts." Mr. Hoover 
believed that "we could never explain the matter to our own 
people if we allowed the two things to get connected ; that it 
would drag us into the European mess and he would never 
consent to it. ... At times our argument got quite tense, but 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 205 

finally we came down to our usual terms . . . and we both 
agreed to think further over it." 

In the following days other fears beset the President. He 
seemed receptive to pessimistic estimates, and Stimson was able 
to endure the gloomy atmosphere only because he knew that 
"the responsibility which lay on the President was terrible/' 
that he "was following his usual psychological reaction to a 
proposition like this," and that "when he finally does make up 
his mind and does act, he turns to it with great courage." 

This estimate, written on June 13, was borne out in what 
followed. The evening of June 18 was the gloomiest of all at 
the White House. Stimson and Mills went to the President 
to make a final presentation of the case for a moratorium. 
Mills did most of the talking. "The President was tired and 
... he went through all the blackest surmises. ... It was 
like sitting in a bath of ink to sit in his room. . . . But I think 
he is moving at last." 

And he was. That same evening Mr. Hoover made his final 
decision, secured by telephone the support of thirty leading 
members of the House and Senate, and on the following morn- 
ing at Cabinet meeting he was at his best, active, clear-sighted, 
and full of new strength. 

Now it was time for Stimson to begin his major diplomatic 
duty in connection with the moratorium. The key to the suc- 
cess of the scheme was the attitude of the French. The Amer- 
ican proposal would be acceptable in America only if it covered 
all intergovernmental loans ; the American concession must 
therefore be matched on a smaller scale by the French. But 
Mr. Hoover's proposal could not be discussed with the French 
until he had reached his final decision. Stimson had worried 
Mr. Hoover by discussing the possibility of an American move 
even with Ramsay MacDonald in a personal telephone con- 
versation. Nor was joint action with France any part of the 
American plan, for reparations were a touchy subject among 
the politicians of Paris; they might not readily consent to a 
plan which departed somewhat from the Young Plan, and 
both Mr. Hoover and Stimson were certain that any mora- 
torium would lose its strength and psychological value if sub- 



206 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

jected to diplomatic bargaining and public speculation before 
it was announced as a complete and definite proposal. 

But the two men nevertheless had no intention of taking the 
French by surprise. On the afternoon of June 19 Stimson 
explained Mr. Hoover's plan in detail to the French Ambas- 
sador. The American decision was less than twenty-four hours 
old. In view of the later French attitude, Ambassador 
ClaudePs reaction is interesting. "He said that it was wonder- 
ful, that he had no idea the President could go so far." (Diary, 
June 19, 1931) He further promised to urge his Government 
to support the plan. 

Unfortunately the timing of this interview, though quick, 
was not quick enough. Mr. Hoover's hand was forced by 
rumors leaking from Congressmen, and he had to make a 
public announcement of his plan before the French had had a 
chance to digest it. On June 20 the proposal was announced 
from the White House; there followed a rather cautious 
French response, and two weeks of chilly negotiations were 
necessary before the French would consent to give up the "un- 
conditional" reparation payments of the Young Plan. 

Stimson and Mr. Hoover were criticized in some circles for 
this untidy aspect of a proposal which in every other respect 
was a remarkable success. Looking back at it, Stimson could 
not agree that the fault was his or the President's. Even if the 
French had had a few more days' notice, he did not believe 
that they would have been more cordial. Only prior negotia- 
tion could have produced that result, and prior negotiation was 
impossible; it would have caused still more financial unrest 
in Europe. As Ramsay MacDonald put it to the German 
Chancellor in early June and to Stimson later that summer, 
consultation about the moratorium would have been "fatal" 
to the financial situation. More serious still and this was the 
point which Mr. Hoover was forced to bear in mind as he 
dealt with a politically hostile Congress negotiations with 
France would have given free rein to assertions at home that 
Uncle Sam was being played for a sucker, and the general 
public support that the President obtained in the United States 
by making his proposal unilaterally American would have 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 207 

evaporated in a heated atmosphere of charge and counter- 
charge. 

This was a clear instance of the sort of international problem 
which Stimson had already faced in his work for naval limi- 
tation and was to meet again repeatedly in the following 
months. Time after time the issues which divided the states- 
men of the great powers were those on which they themselves 
would have been happy to reach agreement and would have 
found agreement easy if they had not feared a hostile verdict 
from public opinion at home. The leaders of France were fully 
aware of the need for a moratorium; they also understood the 
importance of quick and unanimous agreement on a plan. But 
they could not meet Mr. Hoover openly and generously lest 
they appear to be neglecting issues for which the French Army 
had been mobilized only eight years before. That the French 
reaction was not even more bitter than it was Stimson attributed 
to the a skill and force" with which Premier Pierre Laval 
held out against extremists, but even Laval was not publicly 
enthusiastic about the moratorium. What the French Govern- 
ment won for France in the two weeks of negotiation which 
followed was negligible in fact, but in emotion it was all- 
important; by their truculence the French leaders aligned 
themselves with the aggrieved nationalism of their people. The 
constant repetition of this tragic compulsion to follow the worse 
course while seeing and approving the better was to bring 
eventual downfall to all the efforts of the postwar statesmen. 

Stimson felt that this French delay in accepting Mr. 
Hoover's proposal was a matter of major importance. He had 
pointed out to Claudel in their first interview that everything 
depended on the psychological effect of the plan ; this in turn 
depended on prompt and generous-spirited approval from 
France, as the second of creditor nations. The initial effect of 
Mr. Hoover's announcement was electric ; in the United States, 
in Great Britain, in Germany, the people took hope from his 
boldness. Withdrawals of credit from Germany ceased; men 
wrote of the "turning of the tide"; stock prices rose on the 
world's exchanges. But when no friendly voice was raised in 
France, spirits sagged, and by the time an agreement had been 
haggled out, on July 6, the first flush of hope had begun to 



ao8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

pale. Of course Stimson could not make the French solely 
responsible for this unhappy result; there were financial weak- 
nesses in Germany that even a suspension of reparations could 
not wholly eliminate. But to say that the French attitude was 
hardly helpful seemed to him to be putting it mildly. 

The moratorium remained in Stimson's view one of the 
best things Mr. Hoover ever did. It definitely shut off the 
possibility of an immediate major political crisis in Germany. 
Time was provided for a new study of reparations, and it 
became possible to apply more orthodox financial remedies 
to the crisis in Central Europe. If the moratorium did not 
stimulate the recovery for which Stimson had hoped, it most 
certainly prevented an immediate and desperate breakdown. 
And Stimson particularly liked it because it was an example 
of the bold executive leadership which he considered the cen- 
tral requirement of effective democratic government. Mr. 
Hoover did what cautious counsels of political prudence for- 
bade, and by so doing he won a major political victory at home 
and abroad. 

Yet the fact remained that the relief afforded by the mora- 
torium was insufficient; within a month further emergency 
measures were necessary to save Germany. The causes of the 
world depression were deeper than anything governments 
were equipped to handle, and the pillars of orthodox interna- 
tional economics continued to collapse one by one. Perhaps the 
most shocking single event was the departure of Great Britain 
from the gold standard in September, but this was only one of 
a long series of happenings which showed clearly that the eco- 
nomic structure of postwar Europe and America was unsound. 
But these events cannot concern us here ; we must return to the 
story of Stimson's own small part in the struggle. 

Long before the crisis which led to the moratorium he had 
made plans for a summer expedition to Europe. His original 
purpose was to familiarize himself with the leading men and 
problems of the European scene. Before, during, and after 
his service as Secretary of State he remained a strong believer 
in the value of personal meetings among international leaders. 
His departure was briefly delayed by the hectic work sur- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 209 

rounding the announcement of the Hoover moratorium, but 
even before the French were brought into line he was on his 
way, acting on the advice of Ramsay MacDonald and others 
that any prolonged delay in his departure would give cause 
for pessimism about the Franco-American negotiations and 
in any event Mr. Hoover had taken personal charge of the 
dealings with the difficult French. 

In Italy, his first stop, Stimson was able to pursue his pur- 
pose of discussing the general problems of Europe, but when 
he arrived in Paris the immediate financial crisis of Germany 
was once more in the front pages; the moratorium, weakened 
by French delay, had not succeeded for long in stopping 
private creditors from withdrawing their German assets. He 
was at once assigned to represent his country in a full-dress 
international meeting organized by Mr. Hoover. This meet- 
ing assembled first in Paris and then in London as the French 
displayed astonishing pettiness about the time and place at 
which they would agree to help Germany. Although the 
Hoover moratorium had so angered the French that Stimson 
was pointedly snubbed on his arrival, he found himself able 
to win both French and British support for a stand-still agree- 
ment, under which the governments and central banks of the 
three countries agreed to throw their weight against further 
liquidation of short-term credits to Germany. This negotia- 
tion, which Stimson always considered one of the neatest and 
most successful of his career, served to end the immediate 
crisis. The problem of long-range assistance to Germany was 
turned over to the bankers. It was a characteristic of this 
period that the fundamental powers of international trade 
and finance rested less with governments than with private 
interests or autonomous central banks. This was particularly 
true of the United States, and if it had^not been for the con- 
stant and intelligent co-operation which he received from 
George L. Harrison of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, 
Stimson would have found it very difficult to play any useful 
role at all in financial matters. 2 

2 Harrison became a good friend in this period, and during World War II he was 
one of Stimson's ablest associates, advising first on problems of wartime finance and 
later on the uniquely significant question posed by the successful development of 
the atom bomb. 



210 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

His experiences in working out the stand-still agreement, 
and elsewhere in Europe in 1931, had one important incidental 
result for Stimson. They taught him how to deal with the 
press. From the very beginning of his term he had found press 
relations difficult. The ordinary State Department reporter 
of the time seemed to him irresponsible and often untrust- 
worthy, and at the London Conference he had been greatly 
annoyed by the zeal with which reporters for newspapers 
hostile to naval limitation tried to embarrass the American 
delegation. The result of his annoyance had been a stiff atti- 
tude toward all newspapers, and the result of this in turn was 
that he received a very bad press. This bad press reached a 
climax in July, 1931, during the London meeting on debts, 
when Stimson and Castle misunderstood each other over the 
transatlantic telephone, with the result that the reporters in 
Washington and London received two different accounts of 
what was going on. In the face of an outburst of anger from 
the American reporters in London, Stimson made a clean 
breast of the story and learned at once, to his great satisfaction, 
that not all newspapermen are scoundrels. The top-notch 
correspondents to whom he thus explained the background of 
the unfortunate incident proved both friendly and forgiving. 
This experience led him, on his return to Washington, to 
institute a regular weekly press meeting at Woodley to which 
he invited, not the journeymen who covered his Department 
for routine news, but the senior Washington correspondents. 
These men, with very few exceptions, proved trustworthy 
and helpful in their attitudes; what was said off the record 
stayed off the record, and Stimson found himself able to talk 
freely on the basic policies and purposes which surrounded 
his day-to-day actions. 

The State Department is never likely to have perfect press 
relations; it is in the difficult position of always having a 
world-wide audience of foreign diplomats who weigh its every 
word. Furthermore it must often frame its policy slowly and 
deliberately while pressing issues fill the headlines. Later, as 
Secretary of War, Stimson was always a step ahead of the 
press; he had the war news before they did. In the State 
Department this situation was often reversed ; foreign corre- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 211 

spondents could break their stories more quickly, if less 
accurately, than foreign service officers abroad. But the Wood- 
ley conferences proved a great help in 1931 and after; from 
their beginning Stimson dated the start of a marked improve- 
ment in his relation with the press, which can be a powerful 
assistant to policy, as well as a -most annoying opponent. 

3. MORE ABOUT "THESE DAMN DEBTS" 

The original hope of Stimson and Mills had been that the 
Hoover moratorium might extend for two years, and if they 
had had time to look back during 1932 and 1933, they would 
often have regretted that political considerations forced the 
President to limit his proposal to one year. For during the 
last year of the Hoover administration, as men tried to frame 
a policy for the period after the Hoover year expired, the 
wretched war debts became an apple of discord in personal, 
national, and international affairs. 

The beginnings were hopeful. In October, 1931, President 
Hoover and Premier Laval of France agreed that during the 
period of depression further adjustments of intergovernmental 
debts might be necessary. The announcement of this agree- 
ment was applauded in Europe as proof that the United States 
was prepared to recognize the connection between reparations 
and debts. The Europeans refused to be discouraged, either 
by official warning that the Hoover-Laval statement referred 
only to emergency depression measures, or by the truculent 
reluctance with which Congress in December approved the 
moratorium, adding to its approval a resolution opposing 
any reduction or cancellation of war debts. 

In June, 1932, after a delay caused by elections in France 
and Germany (the French swung left and the Germans 
ominously right), the nations concerned with reparations met 
at Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss the future of these pay- 
ments. By this time it was generally agreed that Germany 
neither could nor would continue reparations payments on 
anything like the former scale, and after two weeks of negotia- 
tion ably led by Ramsay MacDonald (with the assistance of 
Edouard Herriot of France) an agreement was reached which 



212 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

reduced the obligations of Germany by 90 per cent and ended 
all strictly "reparations" payments entirely. It was a typical 
irony of postwar Europe that what had been refused to the 
German moderates Stresemann and Bruening should now be 
granted to the nationalist, Von Papen, but in this case the 
change of policy was an accident of timing, not a concession to 
truculence. In any event the settlement of Lausanne was 
generally regarded in Europe as a splendid step forward, for 
even in the Allied nations reparations had come to be regarded 
as nothing better than a source of trouble. 

But the Lausanne agreement had a joker in it. To Euro- 
peans, overreading the Hoover-Laval agreement of the pre- 
vious October, it seemed obvious that a reduction in repa- 
rations must be accompanied by a corresponding reduction 
in war debts. The economic arguments against reparations, as 
a permanent barrier to thriving trade, applied with equal 
force to war debts. And, of course, it would be quite impos- 
sible from the standpoint of internal politics to give up repa- 
rations without some compensation in debt reduction. For 
this reason the creditors on reparation accounts concluded at 
Lausanne a gentlemen's agreement under which they prom- 
ised each other not to ratify the Lausanne reparation settle- 
ment until satisfactory arrangements had been made by all of 
them with their own creditors, meaning of course the United 
States. 

The report of this gentlemen's agreement leaked out un- 
officially, in a manner very badly calculated from the point 
of view of its effect on American opinion. It looked to Amer- 
icans like a conspiracy against the United States. News of the 
agreement touched off a discussion between Stimson and Mr. 
Hoover which showed clearly that the two men were in entire 
disagreement on the whole question of war debts. Stimson 
believed that the Lausanne settlement, with or without the 
gentlemen's agreement, "might really be the beginning of a 
recovery" and that it must be supported by the United States 
without fear or rancor. Mr. Hoover did not agree. He had 
proposed his moratorium purely as a depression measure and 
to him the gentlemen's agreement looked like the opening 
step in an attempt at permanent reduction of the war debts 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 213 

which indeed it was, as Stimson was quite willing to grant. 
"He told me that he entirely differed with me, in funda- 
mentals, that we really had no common ground; that he 
thought that the debts to us could and should be paid; and 
that the European nations were all in an iniquitous combine 
against us. I replied that if he felt that way we were indeed 
on such different ground that I couldn't give him much good 
advice, and that I ought not to be his adviser." (Diary, July 
ii, 1932) When the steam had been blown off, both men 
recovered their good humor, but the difference was apparent. 
Mr. Hoover thought the war debts could be paid; Stimson 
did not. The particular issue at this meeting was whether Mr. 
Hoover should make a statement in effect denouncing the 
gentlemen's agreement. After three days of debate a compro- 
mise solution was reached. The President wrote an open 
letter to Senator Borah praising the reparation settlement but 
warning that the United States would not yield to any foreign 
combination in restraint of payments on the war debts. Then 
the question was dropped, by the consent of all concerned, at 
home and abroad, until after the American election in Novem- 
ber, when it reappeared with a bang. 

The Hoover moratorium had expired in June. In December 
the resumption of major debt payments was scheduled to begin. 
Through the summer the world waited, and while it waited, 
opinion hardened on both sides of the Atlantic. Stimson had 
noticed evidence during the Lausanne meeting of the degree 
to which British and French opinion misunderstood the Amer- 
ican attitude toward war debts, and he had warned the British 
Ambassador against thinking that the American position 
could be stormed by a fait accompli. But he had not been able 
to prevent the gentlemen's agreement, which was wholly 
natural in its purpose and wholly inflammatory in its effect 
In November he found that the situation had grown worse; 
the people of Great Britain and France had come to think 
of the war debts as a millstone hung around their necks 
by the shortsighted and self-destructive greed of Uncle 
Shylock. No statesman in either country could have any other 
public purpose than cancellation. Stimson did not object to 
this purpose by this time he was himself basically a "cancel- 



214 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

lationist" but the tone of European statements and opinion 
was not perfectly calculated to win support from the American 
people. 

And if the atmosphere abroad was not perfect, the feeling 
at home was desperately bad. For a dozen years, in accordance 
with the assertions of Democrats and Republicans alike, the 
American people had been convinced that war debts were a 
moral and economic obligation as binding as any debt in 
personal affairs. This position had been reasserted by both 
candidates in the presidential campaign. The American 
people, and still more the American Congress, were wholly 
unprepared to face the economic facts of life; only among 
economists, bankers, and confirmed believers in international 
co-operation was there any important sentiment for cancel- 
lation. Yet this small group had been joined by the unpre- 
dictable individualist Borah, in midsummer, in a speech which 
seemed to Stimson "temperate, brave, and well-balanced." 
"Of course he is cautious about some things, but compared 
with anyone else at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, it is 
magnificent." (Diary, July 24, 1932) 

Mr. Hoover was no cancellationist, never had been, and 
never would be. More than that, attempts to connect debts 
with reparations except in time of economic emergency seemed 
to him wholly wrong, and it was manifest that the British and 
French intended to make such attempts. Mr. Hoover pre- 
ferred to connect debts with disarmament, arguing that instead 
of welshing on their legal obligations the European debtors 
should make some effort to cut the burden of their arma- 
ments. This position, though eminently logical and morally 
right in the minds of many Americans, was perfectly designed 
to annoy the Europeans. 

As Stimson saw it, Mr. Hoover might be on strong ground 
legally, but both economically and politically he was wrong. 
Economically, the payment of war debts had been a most 
doubtful blessing to the United States, serving merely to un- 
balance further an exchange system in which American ex- 
ports were being strangled by American hostility to imports, 
and giving rise to a series of credit operations abroad which 
were of the most unfortunate character. Intergovernmental 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 215 

debts were all dominated by the problem of transfer of pay- 
ments, a question almost always ignored by heated opponents 
of cancellation; no amount of disarmament, for example, 
seemed likely to make dollar payments very much easier. In 
Stimson's view, the economics of the situation were plainly in 
favor of cancellation. It would certainly have a considerable 
reviving effect on world trade, and even a very small gain 
of this sort would more than balance the payments lost by the 
United States. 

Politically the advantage of cancellation was even greater 
it would restore an atmosphere of good feeling and confidence 
between the United States and western Europe, and this at 
a time when such good feeling was desperately needed. 

The student of Stimson's public activity as Secretary of 
State will find no statement of this position in the records, and 
many at least obliquely contradicting it, for he was only the 
agent of the President and during November and December 
he executed the policy laid down by Mr. Hoover. The diffi- 
culties of this position he described in a diary entry on Novem- 
ber 23. "Of course, from the very beginning of this thing I 
have been fighting a minority battle. I can see all the benefits 
of the good will that we have been laboring so hard for the 
past three years to build up tumbling in fragments around us, 
and I have been trying to make it as easy as possible [for the 
European debtors]. But my zone of operations has been a very 
narrow one, for the President has been perfectly set in his 
policy, and all that I have been able to do is to try to smooth 
down affairs here and there and to guide the thing into as easy 
channels as possible. On that point Mills, too, has been against 
me. He sees only the clear mathematical and legal relations 
of the two nations, and he has been fighting, of course, for his 
Treasury. But with our discussions with Great Britain, we 
have to depart from the legal situation which surrounds a 
regular loan. The whole idea of taking a position which was 
taken at Lausanne in regard to reparations, a revision of 
debts which would bear in mind and help the economic situ- 
ation, quite apart from the legal situation, has been excluded 
by the President's position. His position has been based upon 
the position of the country ever since 1922, and probably no 



216 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

other position was tenable in view of the attitude of Congress. 
But there is another side, and we all have to come to it sooner 
or later. The quicker we get these damn debts out of the way 
in some settlement, in which I hope we may be able to get 
some quid pro quo for our concessions, the better off we will 
be." 

Compared to Congress, of course, Mr. Hoover was a model 
of restraint and broad-mindedness, and in dealing with Con- 
gressmen he regularly emphasized the genuine difficulties of 
foreign nations. Mr. Hoover was also quite prepared to dis- 
cuss debt revision with the Europeans, but he was never able 
to put aside his desire to state and restate a position that left 
little room for negotiation as long as the matter was con- 
sidered in its purely legal aspect, there could be no "Lausanne 
settlement" of the war debts; the grounds for such a settle- 
ment were not in law, but in policy. What Stimson wanted, 
and what Mr. Hoover refused, was bold American leadership 
to get the "damn debts" out of the way. But Mr. Hoover 
refused, not because he feared to lead, but because he did not 
agree with Stimson, as the following diary entry makes clear. 
"I cautioned him that while I was trying to get all the quid 
pro quo for the debts that I could, I didn't expect that we 
were going to save much of the debt. Then he wanted to know 
if I knew that I was ten millions of miles away from his 
position. He believed that debts were merely a chip on the 
current of ordinary prosperity. This discouraged me a good 
deal. I am not an economist, but I know mighty well that if 
the nations that were receiving reparations could not hold 
them, we shall not be able to save much of our debts. . . . When 
I see France, who has a large stake in Europe and who is 
right next to Germany, give up her war reparations to an 
extent per capita nearly equivalent to our war debts ... in 
spite of all the feeling in France arising out of the war on 
behalf of those reparations, and in spite of the fact that she 
has the right to invade Germany to save them, it seems pre- 
posterous to think that we should be able to keep our debts 
when we are three thousand miles away from them and with- 
out an army and have no intention or desire to have a war 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 217 

quarrel with either France or Britain." (Diary, December 

4, J 932) 

So Stimson continued in his small minority, with the friendly 
company of Borah and the bankers and economists. And he 
continued to play his role in the singularly complex negotia- 
tions which preceded the debt-payment deadline on Decem- 
ber 15. It was a hectic period, and there were diplomatic 
errors on all sides Stimson made one when he softened a 
note to Great Britain while leaving a similar note to France 
in its original stiff form. There were reasons for the mistake, 
and good ones, but it was nevertheless, as the diary remarked, 
"unworkmanlike." The debts were too touchy a subject for 
such errors to be cheap, and yet it was their very touchiness 
that made errors difficult to avoid. Matters were not simplified, 
of course, by the fact that Mr. Hoover was now a lameduck 
President, and President-elect Franklin Roosevelt seemed less 
co-operative to administration leaders than he seemed to him- 
self. The President was powerless to suspend the payments, as 
requested by the debtor nations, and unwilling to recommend 
suspension to a hostile Congress; Mr. Roosevelt held aloof. 
Matters slid toward an impasse of default from Europe and 
public resentment at home. Then surprisingly, on December 
15 the British courageously paid in full what they owed, and 
so did several other nations, following their lead. But the 
French defaulted, and they had company. To Stimson's deep 
regret, no voice had been raised by the administration to 
soften the official attitude of America or to battle the illogical 
sentiment of a nationalistic people. Looking across the Atlantic 
he found in Edouard Herriot the real hero of the episode. 
For Herriot, the French Premier, had dared to oppose his 
people in the interests of international understanding. "He 
insisted upon payment in the face of the most terribly opposed 
public opinion and a very adverse Parliament. They finally 
voted it down and him out of office. But he is much bigger 
today than anyone on our side of the Atlantic." (Diary, 
December 15, 1932) 

The Hoover administration's direct activity on debts was 
wound up on December 19 by a final statement from the 
President. Stimson worked closely with Mr. Hoover on this 



2i8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

message, and the pressure had sufficiently lightened so that 
the President could joke about his friend the Secretary of 
State as "our friend who was for protecting every country 
but his own." For his part Stimson was delighted to see Mr. 
Hoover in good cheer, and he felt that the message to Congress 
was a good one; although it repeated views Stimson did not 
share, it was frank and explicit in recommending early and 
fair-minded negotiation with the debtor nations. Here the 
matter ended, except for further efforts to help the President- 
elect which at last resulted in a joint communique on January 
20 > X 933> to the effect that Mr. Roosevelt would be glad to 
talk with a British representative as soon as he was President. 

The later history of the war debts is briefly told. In June, 
1933, no further agreement having been reached, the British 
and several other countries made a "token" payment which 
temporarily satisfied opinion in both countries; France and 
most of her friends continued to default. In December, 1933, 
the same process was repeated. Desultory discussions between 
the new administration and the debtors revealed no basis for 
agreement, and in 1934 the United States Congress passed 
and Mr. Roosevelt signed the Johnson Act, which ended token 
payments as a device for avoiding default and banned loan 
flotations by all defaulting countries. Except from Finland, no 
further war-debt payments of any kind were ever received. 
The history of the war debts thus ended in mutual ill will 
between the United States and her debtors. 

And as he looked back in 1947, it was the very existence 
of the war debts, and not any later error in dealing with them, 
that seemed to Stimson to have been fatal. 

Supposing that Mr. Hoover had believed with Stimson in 
quick cancellation, and supposing that he had chosen to fight 
on that ground, probably little but glory could have been 
won, for Congress would almost surely have blocked the 
effort it was probably too late, in November, 1932, to educate 
the American people. Even Franklin Roosevelt, who was 
almost surely in agreement with Stimson, and politically much 
stronger than Mr. Hoover, never chose to fight for reduction 
of the war debts. 

The original and fatal error, as Stimson saw it, was the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF DISASTER 219 

notion that huge, interest-bearing loans made in emergency 
conditions for emergency purposes could ever be repaid by 
one government to another. It simply could not be done, 
politically. And when to the political difficulty there was 
added the peculiar tariff policy of the American nation, the 
assurance of default became doubly sure. Debts incurred in 
a common struggle will never be repaid to a country which 
hates imports. And any pretense that they will be so paid can 
only be a source of mutual ill will, increasing by compound 
interest at a very high rate against a later reckoning. Stimson 
saw personally the poison spread by the debt question in 1932 
and it made him a lasting enemy to any repetition of the 
financing error of World War I. In the early twenties he had 
taken the orthodox view that the debts could and should be 
paid like any other financial obligation. He had had to learn 
by experience, but the experience was a searing one. 

It was because the learning was so bitter that he felt the 
story worth retelling in 1947. For in that year the American 
people were once more forced to face the necessity of advanc- 
ing funds to their European neighbors. The creation of "war 
debts" had been avoided during World War II by the wonder- 
ful engine of Lend-Lease, but in the postwar period there 
seemed to be a return to the idea of loans, on the theory that 
money advanced after victory should properly be repaid. A 
glance at the experience after World War I confirmed Stim- 
son in his view that this distinction was dangerous nonsense. 
In very large part the "war debts" rancorously repudiated 
after 1931 were debts arising from postwar "reconstruction." 
From any practical standpoint there was no distinction be- 
tween money used to fight a war and money used to recover 
from its worst ravages. However impolitic it might be to 
say it, Stimson was wholly convinced in 1947 that, if the 
United States wished to avoid later bitter disillusionment, it 
must make its advances to Europe for postwar reconstruction 
with the same free hand and the same absence of demand for 
repayment that characterized the wartime operations of Lend- 
Lease. America's reward must be in world recovery, and not 
in small debt payments grinding to an embittering halt after 
ten or twenty years. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Far Eastern Crisis 



I. A JAPANESE DECISION 

ON THE night of September 18, 1931, military forces of 
the Japanese Empire occupied strategic cities and towns 
in South Manchuria. In the eighteen months that followed, 
the heaviest and most important burden of the American Sec- 
retary of State was the handling of the resulting international 
crisis. This was the beginning of what the Japanese chose to 
call "the Manchurian Incident"; to Stimson it was always 
something more. In the title of a book written in 1936 he called 
it The Far Eastern Crisis] this book, published by Harper 
for the Council on Foreign Relations, contains a more de- 
tailed record of Stimson's part in the affair than can be given 
here. The account in this chapter is designed to present the 
facts merely in outline; its conclusions will be modified from 
those of the earlier book as 1947 is different from 1936. What 
required circumspection then can be discussed more freely 
now; what was an unfinished history ten years ago is now a 
played-out tragedy. 

The Japanese militarists who planned and executed the 
Manchurian operations of September, 1931, will probably be 
regarded by history as the first active aggressors of World 
War II. There is a direct and significant interconnection be- 
tween their actions and those others, in Ethiopia, the Rhine- 
land, Spain, China, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania, 
which culminated in general war in Europe. And it needs no 
argument to show that the vast struggle in the Pacific which 
broke out at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was merely 
the logical result of the events which began in Manchuria. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 221 

The road to World War II is now clearly visible ; it has run its 
terrible course from the railway tracks near Mukden to the 
operations of two bombers over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

It was in this focus that Stimson reconsidered, in 1947, his 
part in the Manchurian affair. Whatever he had done in that 
connection, and whatever others had done, must now be 
studied as part of a long sequence of events which had ended 
in a great war. 

Though it was a minor episode compared to the events 
which followed it, the Far Eastern crisis of 1931-1933 pre- 
sented as complex a problem to peace-loving statesmen as 
anything that happened later on the road to world-wide war. 
As the first attempt to deal with aggression, it had perhaps a 
special significance; it certainly presented special difficulties. 
To Stimson, in 1947, the Manchurian affair was no longer of 
very great interest in itself. But as a lesson in world politics 
it remained an extraordinarily instructive story. It was not a 
story with a simple moral; indeed, one reason for Stimson in 
particular to reconsider the case was that in the years after 
1933 there had grown up among many Americans a legend 
that if he had not been blocked by the wicked British, Stimson 
would easily have brought the wicked Japanese to terms by 
bold and energetic action in 1932. It was not as simple as that. 

The situation precipitated by Japanese military action in 
September, 1931, had a history behind it only less complex 
than the history to which it opened the door. Manchuria was 
an area in which for half a century the interests of three major 
nations had been in conflict, and by 1931 the intentions and 
aspirations of two of these nations had so far developed in 
mutual opposition that military operations were a painfully 
natural development. 

Shortly stated, the issue in Manchuria was between the Chi- 
nese aspiration toward complete national independence and 
the Japanese conviction that security of basic Japanese inter- 
ests required the maintenance of extensive economic and polit- 
ical rights in Manchuria. To a certain degree and it is 
impossible to be more precise special Japanese rights in 
Manchuria were sanctified by treaty. Since the Treaties of 
Portsmouth and Peking, of 1905, China had recognized cer- 



222 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tain rights of the Japanese as successors to czarist Russia in 
South Manchuria. Exactly what these rights involved in prac- 
tice, and how far they were extended by later agreements, 
were matters of dispute long before 1931. It was still less clear 
how their existence could be permanently reconciled with the 
universally recognized juridical sovereignty of China through- 
out Manchuria. And the steady increase of Chinese national- 
ism, extending itself into Manchuria during the 1 920*5, made 
these questions constantly more urgent. During the first three 
decades of the twentieth century, some thirty millions of Chi- 
nese poured northward into Manchuria, where they continued 
to think of themselves as Chinese in Chinese territory. The 
few hundred thousand Japanese in the area were a mere hand- 
ful, sufficient only to act as a continual goad to rising Chinese 
pride. 

But the years before 1931 saw no change whatever in the 
determination of the Japanese to maintain the special position 
in Manchuria for which they had so greatly sacrificed in their 
war against Russia in 1904-1905. Around the Japanese-owned 
railways, and other material holdings, there had grown up a 
cluster of "vital interests," partly strategic and partly eco- 
nomic all the more important for the difficulty of defining 
them and the whole had become embedded in the national 
consciousness of a people singularly sensitive to considerations 
of imperial pride and place. 

Thus far the Japanese people were united. A peculiar and 
vitally important Japanese interest existed in Manchuria. But 
from 1905 onward there was "a very deep and fundamental 
cleavage in Japanese political thought as to the method by 
which that interest should be supported and enforced." 1 It 
was this cleavage which dominated Stimson's early thinking 
about the Manchurian crisis, and the success with which one 
side forced its own solution is the primary active cause for the 
decline and fall of the peace of the Pacific. Determined aggres- 
sion will always result in war. We have therefore to consider 
more closely the nature of the Japanese problem. 

Emerging from feudal isolation in the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, Japan had with astonishing swiftness adopted 

1 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 27. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 223 

many of the economic and political customs of the West. She 
had developed a dynamic and expanding capitalist economy; 
with it she had so far shifted her methods of government that 
the Japanese could show political institutions to parallel most 
of those of the Western democracies the legislative assembly, 
the responsible Cabinet, the diplomat in Western clothes 
speaking the Western idiom. The westernized Japanese, cap- 
italist, engineer, politician, or educator, was received as a 
colleague and an equal by his fellows in Europe and the 
United States. 

But the westernization of Japan was only partial ; it did not 
wholly supplant the ancient ways. There remained an Emperor 
whose person was deified and whose final authority was never 
openly denied ; if he was in many ways a constitutional mon- 
arch, that was not by any constitution but by his divine, and 
flexible, choice. Nor were his ministers fully masters in his 
house, for military leaders retained their right of direct access 
to the Emperor, and many a Japanese officer considered that 
no delegation of responsibility and initiative to the Prime 
Minister exceeded that implicitly granted to the Emperor's 
loyal generals and admirals. Nor did these men admit that 
their differences with the civilian elements must be settled by 
any appeal to an electorate. Neither side, indeed, was basically 
democratic; the instinct for authority remained almost un- 
weakened, and the contest for power in Japan was between 
rival groups of leaders near the throne. And the soldier re- 
tained the prestige of seven centuries of power, so that only the 
most liberal and outspoken ever openly attacked "the military 
mind." 

In dealing with Manchuria, all Japanese insisted on the 
maintenance of special privileges. The cleavage was between 
two lines of policy which bore the euphemistic names of 
"friendship"' and "positive." The "friendship" policy, while 
renouncing none of the contractual rights maintained by the 
Japanese, aimed at a pacific settlement with China ; its great 
exponent, Baron Shidehara, was less interested in the military 
position of Japan in Manchuria than in the sound develop- 
ment of Japanese economic interests in that area. Shidehara 
was Foreign Minister in 1931. 



224 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The "positive" policy, on the other hand, rested ultimately 
on force, and it was not limited by merely economic objectives. 
To Baron Tanaka, for example, the development of Japanese 
hegemony in Manchuria was only a stage in the indefinite ex- 
pansion of the new Japanese Empire; advocates of the "posi- 
tive" policy were outspoken in their assertion that Japanese 
rights in Manchuria must be forcefully maintained. 

In the perspective of 1947 it is easy to argue that in the con- 
test for power in Japan decisive authority always rested with 
the militarists and that any less aggressive attitude was merely 
a passing phase. The emotions generated in the struggle to de- 
feat Japan are still in the foreground, and the peculiar hostil- 
ity felt by Americans for the Japanese enemy has not yet 
wholly disappeared. But no judgment of Japan can be based 
entirely on the events from 1931 to 1945, terrible as they are; 
to assume that militarism was always dominant in modern 
Japan is to be left with no explanation for the remarkably re- 
strained behavior of the Japanese Government in the 1920*8. 

The contest for power between the militarists and the mod- 
erates was constant in twentieth-century Japan. In the waging 
of the Russian war of 1904 the military were dominant. In 
reviving a country almost prostrated by that contest the mod- 
erates took the lead. The expansion of Japan during the First 
World War was largely military in its origins. When the mil- 
itarists were in some degree discredited by the failure of their 
aggressive ventures between 1915 and 1922, the moderates 
took control. The general Far Eastern settlement of 1922, em- 
bodied in treaties and agreements signed at Washington, was 
a model of friendly conciliation and was accompanied by acts 
of withdrawal by Japan which no militaristic government 
would have permitted. During the decade before September 
1 8, 1931, Japanese foreign policy was restrained and peace- 
able. "Instead of seeking markets by force, she had been fol- 
lowing the entirely opposite plan of 'commercial expansion 
and political good neighborliness.' . . . She had followed this 
course patiently and in the face of considerable difficulty and 
provocation." As late as 1930, against the violent objection of 
the military party, the Japanese Government had ratified the 
London Naval Treaty. But it was perhaps significant of the 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 225 

rising tension in Japan that this success was followed by the 
assassination of the senior responsible moderate statesman, 
Premier Hamaguchi. 

What happened in September, 1931, was that the military 
party, acting on its own initiative, undertook to reverse the 
"friendship" policy, aiming not merely at a "positive" solu- 
tion of the Manchurian problem but at a complete reorienta- 
tion of Japanese foreign policy, away from the conciliatory 
methods and economic objectives of Shidehara, toward a pro- 
gram of active imperialism. The full explanation of this deci- 
sion has not yet been written, but elements of its causes were 
clear even in 1931. The situation in Manchuria, so full of 
long-term dangers to the Japanese, had become inflamed as a 
result of anti-Korean demonstrations by the Chinese, and still 
more by the murder of a Japanese Army officer by Chinese 
soldiers. There was thus in Japan, partly natural and partly 
manufactured, a strong public sentiment for firm action. Nor 
had the Chinese, in negotiations with Baron Shidehara over 
the vexed issue of railway development, shown any desire to 
accommodate even the moderate Japanese. 

At the same time, in the much broader field of foreign com- 
merce as a whole, the policy of Shidehara was being discred- 
ited by the brutal fact of the world depression. Between 1929 
and 1931 Japanese foreign trade, an item of primary impor- 
tance in Japanese economy, was cut in half. And Japanese 
commercial enterprise was meeting such new and powerful 
obstacles as the American Hawley-Smoot tariff. As other na- 
tions attempted to escape from the depression by limiting their 
markets, Japanese opinion naturally shifted away from its 
earlier acceptance of a policy of peaceful trade. And the al- 
ternative eagerly and persuasively offered by a strong and 
active party was that of forceful expansion. The first step 
taken by the military was to present the Japanese people, and 
the world, with a fait accompli in South Manchuria. 

This Japanese demarche, if it had occurred two generations 
earlier, would have had relatively little meaning for the 
United States. But in the forty years before 1931 the United 
States had become a world power, and in the Far East both 
her commercial and her political interests were considerable. 



226 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Toward Japan the United States had always been friendly, 
although in both nations there were groups who argued that 
the two peoples were natural enemies; toward China, the 
Americans had assumed a position of unusual importance. In 
a spirit of what Stimson called farsighted self-interest, the 
United States had been the leader in developing the principle 
of the Open Door in China, under which it was agreed that 
the territorial integrity of China, and free access of commerce, 
were to be respected by all nations. The principle of the Open 
Door had been enlarged and made law in the Nine-Power 
Treaty signed as part of the Washington settlement of 1922. 
The signatories of that treaty included the United States, 
Japan, Great Britain, and all the other major nations holding 
territory in the Pacific except Soviet Russia. And in addition 
to this formal interest in the integrity of China, there had de- 
veloped by 1931 an extensive interconnection between Ameri- 
cans and China in the form of missionary and educational 
undertaking. China was an important friend of the United 
States. 

And above and beyond any specific local interest of the 
United States in Manchuria there was in 1931 another major 
American concern which was bound to be seriously affected 
by the Japanese advance. This was the American interest in 
world peace, formalized in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to which 
China, Japan, the United States, and every other major nation 
had adhered. The peace of 1931 was a peace based on treaties; 
the central treaty was the treaty renouncing war, and in the 
world of 1931 it was no longer possible for any country to pre- 
tend that war abroad had no meaning at home. 

So the United States was interested when Japanese troops 
moved out of their railway zone on the night of September 18. 

2. FROM CONCILIATION TO NONRECOGNITION 

The first requirement of the American Government as it 
considered the situation in Manchuria on September 19 and 
after was facts. Accurate information is the raw material of 
policy. It was therefore fortunate that the representatives of 
the United States in the Far East during this period, and par- 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 227 

ticularly the men who were in or near Manchuria, were un- 
usually competent. Throughout the crisis Stimson and his 
State Department advisers "were habitually placed in the po- 
sition of having in our hands earlier and more accurate infor- 
mation than almost any other country." 2 

Reports from the Far East quickly made it clear that the 
Japanese movement in Manchuria was essentially an act of 
aggression, and that insofar as it represented the deliberate 
action of the Japanese Government it was a flagrant violation 
of the Kellogg Pact, the Nine-Power Treaty, and the Cove- 
nant of the League of Nations. As Stimson put it on Septem- 
ber 22, "It is apparent that the Japanese military have initi- 
ated a widely extended movement of aggression only after 
careful preparation with a strategic goal in mind." 

This was the fact; but it was a fact with a double meaning. 
As an act of aggression, it was a most serious attack on the en- 
tire fabric of world peace. "If the military party should suc- 
ceed in having its way, . . . the damage to the new structure of 
international society provided by the post-war treaties would 
be incalculable." 3 On the other hand, as an action evidently 
undertaken without the approval of the Japanese Premier and 
Foreign Minister, it remained possible that it was legally less 
aggression than mutiny. To Stimson and all his advisers it 
seemed clear that the best hope for an honorable settlement 
was in the liberal leaders of Japan itself. "The evidence in our 
hands pointed to the wisdom of giving Shidehara and the 
Foreign Office an opportunity, free from anything approach- 
ing a threat or even public criticism, to get control of the situa- 
tion." 4 This must be done without any surrender of American 
treaty rights or any approval of the use of force. "My problem 
is to let the Japanese know that we are watching them and at 
the same time do it in a way which will help Shidehara who is 
on the right side, and not play into the hands of any nationalist 
agitators." (Diary, September 23, 1931) 

For the next two months, with gradually decreasing hopes 
of success, the State Department followed this line. The 

2 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 7. 

3 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 37. 

4 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 34. 



228 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

method employed was to avoid any public statement critical 
of the Japanese, while at the same time using diplomatic chan- 
nels for the delivery of messages expressing the strong Ameri- 
can interest in a peaceful settlement and the deep American 
concern at the increasing aggressiveness of the Japanese Gov- 
ernment. Stimson was on terms of cordial personal friendship 
with the Japanese Ambassador, Katsuji Debuchi ; he was cer- 
tain that Debuchi was a strong supporter of Shidehara's con- 
ciliatory policy (this was by no means true of all members of 
the Japanese foreign service the cleavage in Japan was not 
one in which all civilians were on one side and all soldiers on 
the other). In a series of conferences with Debuchi, Stimson 
constantly reiterated his desire not to embarrass Shidehara, 
while at the same time he insisted that the American Govern- 
ment could not be unconcerned by such outrages as the Jap- 
anese bombings of the Chinese city of Chinchow, on October 
8. Other more formal messages were delivered by American 
diplomatic officers in Tokyo. Perhaps the strongest was one 
delivered by Ambassador Cameron Forbes on November 27, 
in protest against apparent Japanese preparations to proceed 
with a military occupation of Chinchow, which by then was 
the last remaining outpost of Chinese authority in South Man- 
churia. Stimson reminded Baron Shidehara that only three 
days before he had informed Stimson that the highest military 
authorities had promised not to advance against Chinchow; 
Stimson imparted a sting to his message by pointing out that 
American policy had been partly based on confidence in 
Shidehara's word. Whether as a result of this message or not, 
the withdrawal of the Japanese expeditionary force against 
Chinchow began on the following day. Stimson always in- 
clined to take the credit for this withdrawal, but he was forced 
to admit that, even if it was his doing, it was the only concrete 
result of his appeals. Baron Shidehara and the moderates were 
struggling to regain the authority they had lost by the fait 
accompli^ but each new report of Japanese advances in Man- 
churia, and each new evidence of a stiff tone in official For- 
eign Office papers showed that they were fighting a losing 
battle. The harrowing fact remained that there was nothing 
their friends in other countries could do to help them. Any at- 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 229 

tack by foreigners and particularly by Americans on Jap- 
anese militarism would merely "play into the hands of any 
nationalist agitators." Of these there were plenty; one of them 
was the official spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office, a 
man named Shiratori, who delighted in chauvinistic comment 
on Stimson's statements whether these were public or private. 

Meanwhile the main center of discussion of the situation on 
Manchuria was Geneva. Both the Assembly and the Council 5 
of the League of Nations were in session on September 19, 
and both China and Japan were members of the League 
both, indeed, members of the Council. On September 21 the 
Chinese representative appealed to the Council of the League. 
Jurisdiction of the controversy thus passed promptly and 
properly to the League of Nations, of which the United States 
was not a member. 

"We were not a member of the League. Yet we were greatly 
interested in the matter over which it had thus assumed juris- 
diction. By virtue of our propinquity and of our historic inter- 
est in the opening up of both China and Japan to the modern 
world we had in some ways a greater direct interest than any 
other nation in the world. Furthermore, we were vitally con- 
cerned not only in the preservation of peace on this particular 
occasion, but also in the precedent which a breach of it 
might have on the post-war treaties." 6 It was at once apparent, 
therefore, that the State Department must carefully consider 
its proper course in assisting the League to handle the con- 
troversy successfully. Here again Stimson was fortunate in 
having two able foreign-service officers on the spot Hugh 
Wilson, the American Minister to Switzerland, and Prentiss 
Gilbert, the Consul General in Geneva ; in his dealings with 
the League he also made use of Charles G. Dawes, Ambassador 
to Great Britain, a man whose high standing in Europe gave 
his actions unusual weight. 

It was evident that the League was the proper agent for 
handling the situation. Not only was it to the League that 
China had appealed, but the League, representing sixty-odd 

5 The reader who has forgotten or never knew the League of Nations will find an 
adequate parallel to these bodies in the General Assembly and the Security Council of 
the United Nations. 

6 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 39. 



230 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 



nations, would be able to act with the authority of world opin- 
ion, whereas any independent action by the United States 
would be merely the action of a single nation susceptible to 
the charge of self-interest. Furthermore, the League had ma- 
chinery for handling such controversies, although some of it 
had never been used, while the treaties under which the 
United States was an interested party offered no such ready 
advantages. For these reasons and also because he had 
adopted an attitude of watchful waiting while Shidehara tried 
to get control of his countrymen Stimson was content at first 
to leave the leadership in formulating policy to the League. 
At the same time it was of great importance that the United 
States should not act to embarrass the League. "Our policy 
should be to co-operate and support and so far as possible to 
avoid clashing with League policy." 7 

The complex and fluctuating course of American co-opera- 
tion with the League during the autumn of 1931 cannot here 
be described in detail. Neither the Americans nor the mem- 
bers of the League had any previous experience in collabora- 
tion on so touchy a subject as a threat to world peace, and there 
was misunderstanding and error on both sides. The Ameri- 
cans were frequently nervous lest they offend American public 
opinion or seem to be instigators of a policy hostile to Japan; 
the Europeans were often upset by the necessarily tentative 
and incomplete co-operation of the American representatives, 
who after all could never act as ordinary members of the 
Council. But in spite of these minor difficulties, the American 
effort to co-operate with the League was in general successful, 
for the major League powers fully shared the American view 
that every effort should be made to achieve a settlement by 
conciliatory methods, but without surrendering the obvious 
rights of China. And although Stimson was criticized in some 
quarters for the caution with which he conducted his "co-op- 
eration," he thought it fair to note that for an American Sec- 
retary of State to deal with the League at all was a long step 
forward. To himself he seemed adventurous. 

The Council of the League in September and October con- 
tented itself with two hortatory resolutions; faced in Novem- 

7 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 41. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 231 

her at Paris with continued Japanese advances in Manchuria, 
the Council was beginning to consider more energetic action 
when the Japanese for the first time expressed their willing- 
ness to let the League send to Manchuria an impartial Com- 
mission of Enquiry. This sudden reversal, coming at a time 
when disapproval of Japan had reached a new high, acted as 
a remarkable damper on Western resentment and led to the 
appointment of the Lytton Commission, complete with an 
American representative. The unanimous resolution of De- 
cember 10, establishing the commission, contained a repetition 
and extension of earlier adjurations in favor of suspending 
military action and withdrawing troops. But these appeals 
were as quickly set at naught as those in the earlier resolutions. 
Japanese aggression continued. On December n, the moder- 
ate Minseito Cabinet fell, and was succeeded by a Seiyukai 
Cabinet friendly to the "positive" policy in Manchuria. On 
January 2 the military forces of the Empire occupied Chin- 
chow and destroyed the last remnant of Chinese authority in 
Manchuria. With the occupation of Chinchow, Stimson's 
attempts at conciliation by restraint were ended for good, and 
a wholly new phase of American policy began. 

In 1947, reconsidering this first phase of the Manchurian 
affair, Stimson found it difficult to recapture the atmosphere 
which had made him so patient in the face of repeated acts of 
aggression. His original decision to support Shidehara by pa- 
tience and reticence he thought sound enough, and he would 
do it again. This was certainly the best chance of success in 
maintaining peace under law. But perhaps he had clung too 
long to this hope. Once or twice Western representation had 
delayed Japanese advances, but throughout this period there 
was not a single authenticated instance of Japanese withdrawal 
from any position once effectively taken, and there were scores 
of reports of Japanese efforts to reinforce the military occu- 
pation with a subservient civil administration. These facts 
were only rendered more significant by constantly misleading 
Japanese assurances and constantly violated Japanese prom- 
ises. More than that, the Japanese Foreign Office continued 
to expand its requirements for any settlement. All this was 
clear to Stimson. Although clothed in diplomatic language^, 



232 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

his messages to the Japanese Government in this period were 
not soft, and his diary entries were still less so. It remains a 
fact that the American policy of conciliation was often re- 
garded as too kindly to the Japanese and that, in spite of every 
effort to maintain close co-ordination with the League, Amer- 
ican influence was a somewhat restraining factor in discussions 
of collective action. In the main, these impressions were the 
result of exaggerated reports of isolated incidents, coupled 
with repeated efforts by the Japanese to create the impression 
of a cleavage between the United States and the League. But 
it was nevertheless true that the United States did not in this 
period step out boldly against aggression. 

The fact was, as he could clearly see in 1947, that Stimson 
clung for almost three months to his hopes of a change in the 
Japanese position for the excellent reason that any other course 
would lead to extremely unsatisfactory results. It was not easy 
to reach as a final conclusion, one on which policy must be 
based, the view he expressed in his diary on November 19, 
that the whole course of Japanese action since September 18 
had been one of flagrant aggression, that "whenever they 
stopped, it was because there were no more forces of Chang's 
to attack,' 7 and that the attack on Tsitsihar, then just com- 
pleted, was "a flagrant violation of the spirit and probably the 
letter of all the treaties." For if this were so, and if further it 
were true, as Stimson stated in the same entry, that "the Jap- 
anese Government which we have been dealing with is no 
longer in control," and that "the situation is in the hands of 
mad dogs," then what would the American Government do 
about it, and what would happen to the peace of the Far East? 

These were questions debated with increasing urgency in 
the State Department through the autumn of 1931. Each new 
Japanese aggression stimulated discussion. Thus on October 
9, after the bombing of Chinchow, Stimson brought the matter 
up in Cabinet. In this meeting Mr. Hoover expressed the ten- 
tative view that the baby must not be deposited on the Amer- 
icans by the League, a position in which Stimson concurred, 
and he also warned against getting "into a humiliating posi- 
tion, in case Japan refused to do anything about what he 
called our scraps of paper or paper treaties." This also was a 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 233 

point that Stimson appreciated, but the diary entry continued 
with a further comment: "The question of the 'scraps of paper' 
is a pretty crucial one. We have nothing but 'scraps of paper.' 
This fight has come on in the worst part of the world for peace 
treaties. The peace treaties of modern Europe made out by 
the Western nations of the world no more fit the three great 
races of Russia, Japan, and China, who are meeting in Man- 
churia, than, as I put it to the Cabinet, a stovepipe hat would 
fit an African savage. Nevertheless they are parties to these 
treaties and the whole world looks on to see whether the 
treaties are good for anything or not, and if we lie down and 
treat them like scraps of paper nothing will happen, and in 
the future the peace movement will receive a blow that it will 
not recover from for a long time." 

Such a course was unthinkable. Whatever they might be to 
other statesmen or to other nations, the treaties were not scraps 
of paper to Stimson. Respect for treaties was the very founda- 
tion of peace. Yet what could he do? The treaties to which 
the American Government was a party, unlike the Covenant 
of the League, were treaties without teeth. More important 
still, since the basic requirement of policy is that it must be 
supported by public approval and executive leadership, the 
American Government was without teeth. Mr. Hoover was 
a profoundly peaceable man. Outraged as he was by Japanese 
aggression, he was opposed, in every fiber of his being, to any 
action which might lead to American participation in the 
struggles of the Far East. In this view he had the support of 
the American people. 

Stimson could not deny that anything more than verbal 
action to check Japanese aggression might well lead to war. 
He was himself at first opposed to any American use of 
economic sanctions on exactly that ground, and on November 
19, 1931, he so instructed Ambassador Dawes when the ques- 
tion was raised in the League. The American Government 
would be delighted if the League would impose sanctions, 
and would do nothing to interfere with such action, but it 
would not impose sanctions of its own. This was hardly a noble 
position, and Stimson was not proud of his part in it. But 
it was fair to say that the League's interest in sanctions 



234 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was at no time more than spasmodic. The feeling which had 
led Dawes to ask for a statement of the American position did 
not long endure. Like the Americans, the people of Europe 
were for "letting George do it," and only the smaller powers, 
those not likely to be named as George, were constantly in 
favor of economic sanctions. 

If it would not condone the tearing up of the treaties, and 
if it would not take any economic or military action to defend 
them, what would the American Government do? It was this 
question which produced the famous nonrecognition doctrine 
as the only available answer. It is first mentioned in Stimson's 
diary as a suggestion made by Mr. Hoover on November 9. 
"He . . . thinks his main weapon is to give an announcement 
that if the treaty is made under military pressure we will not 
recognize it or avow it." In 'other words, no fruits of aggression 
would be admitted as legal by the American Government. 

Nonrecognition was a moral weapon, a moral sanction. It 
was designed originally less as a method of bringing the Jap- 
anese to reason than as a method of reasserting the American 
conviction that no good whatever could come from the breach 
of treaties. Insofar as it was designed to serve American inter- 
ests in the Far East, it was aimed rather more at China than 
at Japan. Stimson was keenly aware of the special relationship 
between the United States and China which had been de- 
veloped by generations of missionaries and educators, and by 
John Hay's Open Door policy; he knew "the incalculable 
harm which would be done immediately to American prestige 
in China and ultimately to the material interests of America 
and her people in that region, if after having for many years 
assisted by public and private effort in the education and 
development of China towards the ideals of modern Christian 
civilization, and having taken the lead in the movement which 
secured the covenant of all the great powers, including our- 
selves, 'to respect her sovereignty, her independence and her 
territorial and administrative integrity,' we should now cyni- 
cally abandon her to her fate when this same covenant was 
violated." 8 The United States might not be able to prevent 

8 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 90. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 235 

aggression against China, but she must certainly make her 
opinion of it clear. 

Quite aside from the specific issue in the Far East, the 
nonrecognition doctrine was designed by its sponsors as the 
best available method of reinforcing the treaty structure, and 
particularly the Kellogg Pact. If the fruits of aggression 
should be recognized, the whole theory of the Kellogg Pact 
would be repudiated, and the world would be at once returned 
to the point of recognizing war as a legitimate instrument of 
national policy. Nonrecognition might not prevent aggression, 
but recognition would give it outright approval. 

Finally, the nonrecognition doctrine was designed to give 
expression to the deep and genuine feeling of the American 
people, and their Government, that what the Japanese were 
doing in Manchuria was terribly wrong. Not to have made 
some clear public statement embodying this feeling would 
have been to deny and stifle a genuine sentiment of the public. 

Thus, by what Stimson called "a natural and almost inevi- 
table sequence," the State Department came to its note of 
January 7. Delivered to both China and Japan, it read as 
follows : ' 

"With the recent military operations about Chinchow, the 
last remaining administrative authority of the Government 
of the Chinese Republic in South Manchuria, as it existed 
prior to September i8th, 1931, has been destroyed. The Amer- 
ican Government continues confident that the work of the 
neutral commission recently authorized by the Council of the 
League of Nations will facilitate an ultimate solution of the 
difficulties now existing between China and Japan. But in 
view of the present situation and of its own rights and obliga- 
tions therein, the American Government deems it to be its 
duty to notify both the Imperial Japanese Government and 
the Government of the Chinese Republic that it cannot admit 
the legality of any situation de facto nor does it intend to 
recognize any treaty or agreement entered into between those 
Governments, or agents thereof, which may impair the treaty 
rights of the United States or its citizens in China, including 
those which relate to the sovereignty, the independence, or the 
territorial and administrative integrity of the Republic of 



236 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

China, or to the international policy relative to China, com- 
monly known as the open door policy; and that it does not 
intend to recognize any situation, treaty or agreement which 
may be brought about by means contrary to the covenants and 
obligations of the Pact of Paris of August 27, 1928, to which 
Treaty both China and Japan, as well as the United States, are 
parties." 

With the publication of this note the United States, with 
Stimson as its spokesman, stepped to the forefront of the nations 
opposing aggression, and from this time onward, until his 
retirement from office fourteen months later, Stimson was the 
outstanding advocate of collective condemnation of Japan. 
The fact that the note was addressed to both parties to the 
controversy was a concession to the existence of a Commission 
of Enquiry holding the dispute sub judice. Both in China and 
in Japan it was understood that the note was aimed at Japanese 
militarism. The rumors of a more forthright American policy 
which had begun to circulate in December were fully con- 
firmed. Stimson had succeeded in doing what he set out to 
do the long series of notes to and from Japan which had 
begun the previous September was wound up "with a snap." 

And shortly afterward, in accordance with a plan long 
maturing, the American Government made public the diplo- 
matic correspondence to which this note was the climax. 
Stimson here turned to his advantage a Senate Resolution 
sponsored by a man who was no friend to his policy, Hiram 
Johnson. Johnson asked for the State Department's corre- 
spondence on Manchuria, hoping to uncover sinister and secret 
collaboration with the wicked League of Nations. What he 
received was a set of documents which showed no such evil 
activity but which did show that for three months the State 
Department had been maintaining an attitude of courteous but 
firm opposition' to the operations of the Japanese Army, and 
that for three months the Japanese had been giving assurances 
which were promptly violated. The State Department and its 
Secretary received strong public support in a line of policy 
more affirmative, both in its use of international negotiations 
and in its assertion of international interests, than anything 
done in the preceding decade. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 237 

The doctrine of nonrecognition fully safeguarded the moral 
position of the United States, so far as this could be done 
without warlike action. In a still greater purpose, however, 
it was not successful. It did not win the prompt adherence of 
any other major power. While the first object of the note was 
simply to bring the American position in balance with the 
facts of the situation, and thus to reassert American principles 
and reassure friends of America in China, there was a further 
hope in the minds of its sponsors. They believed that much 
might be accomplished in moderating the appetites of the 
Japanese if it could be clearly demonstrated that the united 
opinion of the world was definitely and strongly opposed to 
their course. They therefore hoped that the note of January 7 
might be quickly imitated by other great nations. Since it was 
deliberately designed "to record the final decision of an in- 
fluential government which had made earnest and patient 
efforts for a peaceful solution," it could not be subjected to 
the delays of prior consultation with a view to joint action. Its 
usefulness in securing international support of its position 
must lie rather in "the setting up of 'a standard to which the 
wise and honest may repair,' leaving 'the event in the hand 
of God.' " 9 Nobody repaired. 

Two days before delivering the note to China and Japan 
Stimson explained his intentions and expressed his hopes to 
the Ambassadors of Great Britain, France, and several smaller 
nations which had signed the Nine-Power Treaty. He then 
waited for results. The first and most disappointing reaction 
was that of the British Government. Co-operation with Great 
Britain was in many ways the touchstone of Stimson's foreign 
policy. Co-operation with Great Britain in the Far East was 
of particular importance. The two great previous achievements 
of the United States in Far Eastern affairs, the establishment 
of the Open Door policy and the negotiation of the Washing- 
ton Treaties of 1922, had been very largely dependent on 
British co-operation. John Hay had had the help of Lord 
Salisbury; Charles Evans Hughes had had the help of Lord 
Balfour. Stimson waited now for the help of Sir John Simon, 
and he waited in vain. The response of the British Govern- 

9 Far Eastern Cruis, p. 98. 



238 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ment, so far from supporting his position, was a plain rebuff. 
Choosing to maintain their confidence in Japanese assurances 
about the Open Door, "His Majesty's Government have not 
considered it necessary to address any formal note to the Jap- 
anese Government on the lines of the American Government's 
note, but the Japanese Ambassador in London has been re- 
quested to obtain confirmation of these assurances from his 
Government." Assurances being the Japanese Government's 
strong suit, the desired promises were promptly forthcoming. 
In later years apologists for British foreign policy in the 
Manchurian affair were never able to find any satisfactory 
explanation of this Foreign Office statement. It was even more 
astonishing in what it did not say than in what it did. As the 
Englishman Arnold Toynbee put it, "The most conspicuous 
feature in this communique was its silence in regard to all the 
vital issues the sovereignty, independence and integrity of 
China, the violation of the Nine-Power Treaty and the Kel- 
logg Pact, and the assertion of the principle of the non-recog- 
nition of the illegal results of force which had just been raised 
in the American note which was manifestly the most important 
state paper relating to the Sino-Japanese conflict that had yet 
seen the light." 10 

What the British would not do the French would not do, 
nor the Dutch nor the Italians. The American Government 
stood alone. It seems a fair conjecture that this new form of 
splendid isolation was partly responsible for the cool cheek 
of the Japanese reply on January 16, which firmly reasserted 
Japan's intention to defend the sanctity of treaties and thanked 
the United States for its eagerness to "support Japan's efforts" 
to this end. The message continued with a statement of the 
Japanese position which in effect asserted that the breakup of 
China was so far advanced as to justify Japan in breaking it 
up a little further; the Japanese said that this situation must 
"modify" the application of treaties guaranteeing the terri- 
torial and administrative integrity of China. In 1936, as he 
reconsidered this note, Stimson found in it more than an echo 
of a leading editorial published by the Times of London on 
January ir, in which it was remarked, "Nor does it seem to 
be the immediate business of the Foreign Office to defend the 

10 Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, Oxford, 1932, p. 542. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 239 

'administrative integrity' of China until that integrity is some- 
thing more than an ideal." 11 Both the Times and the Japanese 
were eager to forget that it was precisely because of the unset- 
tled state of China in 1922 that the Nine-Power Treaty had 
sought to safeguard the ideal of administrative integrity. 

Thus the prompt success of the declaration of nonrecogni- 
tion at home and in China was not matched elsewhere. The 
moral position of the United States was secure, but in ordinary 
diplomatic terms she had hardly been very successful. "In 
the middle of January Japan's aggression in Manchuria had 
achieved complete military and diplomatic success. . . . Her 
government had successfully resisted attempts of the other 
nations of the world to intervene with any effectiveness ; had 
delayed and thwarted the efforts of the Council of the League 
under Article XI, and finally had seen a wedge of differing 
policies driven between Great Britain and the United States, 
the two principal nations interested in these international 
efforts. China was completely discouraged; the other nations 
baffled and pessimistic. The collective peace machinery had 
received a blow which made it look entirely ineffective." 12 

3. SHANGHAI 

On the evening of January 28, 1932, a Japanese admiral 
named Shiozawa, commander of Japanese forces in the Inter- 
national Settlement at Shanghai, ordered his marines to ad- 
vance into Chinese territory. The marines were resisted by 
determined and skillful infantry of the Chinese Nineteenth 
Route Army. The admiral replied with a bombing attack on 
the helpless civilians in the area where fighting was taking 
place. "It was an act of inexcusable cruelty and has stained 
the Japanese record at Shanghai for all time. . . . Thousands 
of helpless civilians met their death and two hundred fifty 
thousand helpless refugees passed from the ruins of Chapei 
into the International Settlement. But it was as useless as it 
was cruel and utterly failed to shake the steady defense of the 
Chinese troops.' 113 

11 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 103. 

12 Far Eastern Crisis, p. no. 

13 Far Eastern Crisis, pp. 124-125. 



240 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The Japanese attack in Shanghai was the explosive upshot 
of an energetic and successful boycott of Japanese trade and 
traders organized by the Chinese in retaliation for the occupa- 
tion of Manchuria. Economic boycott is seldom wholly peace- 
ful, and there had been cases of unpunished violence against 
individual Japanese. But once again, as in Manchuria, the 
Japanese reply was one, not of negotiation, but of unrestrained 
force. 

The fighting whose first night was signalized by such unex- 
pected Chinese resistance and such uncalled for Japanese 
brutality continued for more than a month, and until they 
were finally outflanked by a vastly better-equipped force, the 
Chinese infantry stubbornly held the positions they had 
defended on the first night. Constant reinforcements from 
Japan were thrown into a series of frontal attacks, and inci- 
dents of brutal and pointless bombing recurred. The issue 
shifted from one of economics to one of face, and as Japanese 
embarrassment increased,- so did 'the pride and confidence of 
all China. 

The Shanghai . incident produced an international effect 
quite different from that of the Manchurian occupation. In 
the first place, this time there was active fighting, and both 
the Chinese underdog and the Japanese aggressor behaved in 
such fashion as to arouse strong world sympathy for China. 
In Manchuria the Chinese had usually refused to contest the 
Japanese advance; peace-loving Westerners might praise this 
Chinese restraint, but it Was nevertheless somewhat difficult to 
argue for rights which could be so lightly abandoned by their 
owners. As history repeatedly demonstrated in the following 
decade, the world, and particularly the 'American people, 
prefers its underdogs to fight for their rights. The Nineteenth 
Route Army won more sympathy for China than all the elo- 
quence of her protests against the occupation of Manchuria. 
In this feeling Stimson heartily joined, and he became an avid 
student of the military operations at Shanghai. 

While the Chinese gained by fighting, the Japanese lost. 
The arrogance of Admiral Shiozawa and the brutality of the 
Chapei bombing, combined with the ordinary unpopularity 
of the angry bully, made the Japanese position before the 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 241 

world far less attractive than it had been in Manchuria, where 
the use of force had been very limited and the case for Japanese 
rights less clearly false. What had happened in Manchuria, 
though it eventually became clear enough, was much less fully 
reported, and much less understood by world opinion, than the 
events at Shanghai, which involved continuous front-page 
news, ably reported by both newspapermen and ordinary West- 
erners on the spot. Shanghai was a part of the accessible Orient 
in a way that Mukden was not. 

Finally, the operations at Shanghai awoke the British 
Foreign Office. Traditionally the British interest in Manchuria 
was negligible and accordingly neglected; traditionally the 
British interest in Shanghai was intense. Fighting in Shanghai 
might at any time overrun the fragile defenses of the Inter- 
national Settlement, with very serious results for British prop- 
erty and British subjects. More important still, Shanghai was 
the focal point of extensive British interests in the Yangtze 
Valley. Any assertion of a special or exclusive Japanese interest 
in the Shanghai area would seriously 'disturb the British. 

Thus it happened that in dealing with the -situation in 
Shanghai Stimson and the State Department were in a very 
much stronger position than they had been in Manchuria. The 
Japanese were embarrassed by a military check; the Chinese 
were heartened by gallant resistance; the British were aroused 
by a clear threat to their interests ; public opinion in America 
was strongly engaged for China and against Japan. 

Stimson's problem was to make the most of these advantages 
in forwarding his own policy of firm respect for treaties and 
moral condemnation of aggression. 

His first decision was to aim at a close and constant co- 
operation with the British Foreign Office. On January 25, 
when the situation in Shanghai was becoming critical, Stimson 
held a series of discussions with his advisers and with the 
President. "My proposition was to find out what the British 
would do with reference to two steps, first, to serve notice on 
Japan to show our alertness to the situation and how big we 
thought our interests were there and calling their attention to 
the fact that there was no excuse for their landing troops in 
the International Settlement; and second, to move some of the 



242 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Asiatic Squadron up there provided the British would do 
the same." (Diary, January 25, 1932) With the President's 
approval, Stimson on the same day called in the British Am- 
bassador and explained his objectives in detail. 

The British reaction to Stimson's inquiry was cordial. The 
British made Stimson's views about the International Settle- 
ment their own, and with the bombing of Chapei the Foreign 
Office became fully aroused. Sir John Simon dispatched a 
sharp protest to Tokyo, and in his eagerness to maintain soli- 
darity vis-a-vis Japan, Stimson followed suit, although he was 
growing tired of diplomatic representations. A plan for a joint 
appeal to the Japanese Emperor was briefly discussed and 
reluctantly abandoned. As the fighting spread at Shanghai, the 
two nations agreed on substantial additions to their naval 
forces there. The transatlantic telephone was heavily used, and 
by the last day in January both sides were congratulating 
themselves and each other that the great objective of a com- 
mon front had been achieved; in addition the British particu- 
larly were working to keep this common front reinforced by, 
the co-operation of other Western powers. For the first time 
since September 18, the Japanese faced united diplomatic op- 
position. Although there were some minor difficulties, this front 
was successfully maintained throughout the Shanghai affair. 

Acting in combination, the active resistance of the Chinese 
and the diplomatic unity of the Western powers succeeded in 
producing at Shanghai a result quite different from that in 
Manchuria. Although the Chinese were eventually dislodged 
from Chapei, the final withdrawal of the Japanese from all 
areas outside the International Settlement was peacefully 
effected at the end of May. Japanese face had been partially 
protected, but the Chinese boycott continued. In their defeat 
the Chinese had won a moral victory which reminded Stimson 
of the victory in defeat that Americans had won at Bunker 
Hill in 1775. An d the Japanese, in a remarkable Foreign Office 
statement, announced that their withdrawal was designed to 
end "world-wide odium" which the Shanghai incident had 
brought upon Japan. It was a striking victory for world opin- 
ion, and to Stimson it was always a proof of the power of 
true Anglo-American co-operation. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 243 

4. THE BORAH LETTER 

As a bloody sequel to Manchuria, Shanghai provided a 
flaming lesson to the West on the nature of the Far Eastern 
crisis, and during February and March there occurred a series 
of events in Western diplomacy which showed how deeply 
Shanghai had affected the situation. The first problem of the 
American Government was to examine once more its own 
policy and purposes. On January 7 the United States had 
announced a policy of nonrecognition. Was this a sufficient 
expression of the American position? Was that all the United 
States would do? The question was discussed at length in Cab- 
inet meetings on the twenty-sixth and twenty-ninth of January. 
The three principal participants in the discussion were the 
President, Stimson, and Secretary of War Patrick Hurley. 
On the twenty-sixth, after Stimson had briefly stated that the 
situation was serious, Hurley opened the discussion, making 
the argument that notes and diplomatic representations were 
not going to do much good unless backed by force, since in 
his view the Japanese, in Shanghai as in Manchuria, were 
executing steps in a far-flung plan of imperial expansion which 
could be blocked only by war. If the United States was not 
prepared to fight, according to Hurley's argument, she would 
do better not to waste breath in protests which would be 
ignored. Was she interested in driving the matter to a show- 
down? 

Only the President could answer this question, and Mr. 
Hoover's answer was a categorical negative. In his view the 
integrity of China could be forcefully defended by the Chinese 
themselves. He agreed with Hurley's analysis of the intentions 
of Japan, but he also believed that by their mere size and per- 
sistence, the 450 million Chinese would eventually frustrate 
the Japanese grand design. In any event, it was not a proper 
area or occasion for a war by the United States. "He pointed 
out strongly the folly of getting into a war with Japan on this 
subject; that such a war could not be localized or kept in 
bounds, and that it would mean the landing of forces in the 
Far East which we had no reason or sense in doing. He said he 
would fight for Continental United States as far as anybody, 



244 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

but he would not fight for Asia." (Diary, January 26, 1932) 
The President however did not at all agree with Hurley 
about notes and remonstrances. He believed that the Kellogg 
Pact could become a great moral force against aggression, and 
he thought that the doctrine of nonrecognition of January 7 
was a splendid first step in mobilizing opinion behind the 
principle of the pact. "He said that he thought that that note 
would take rank with the greatest papers of this country, and 
that that was the safe course for us to follow now rather than 
by getting into a war in China." (Diary, January 26, 1932) 
Since Mr. Hoover was the President, and since he believed 
that any policy of embargo or sanctions might lead to war, his 
position effectively blocked any governmental support for eco- 
nomic sanctions. This was a point which Stimson had argued 
with Mr. Hoover several times. The President was always 
willing to listen, but he was never persuaded. On February 
20 he "said he hoped that his mind was not closed on anything, 
but he admitted that it was as much closed as possible on the 
question of calling an embargo." He believed that the enforce- 
ment of the treaties to which the United States and Japan were 
parties was a moral obligation to be met by moral pressures. 
. In taking this position Mr. Hoover was squarely in line 
with the whole tradition of American foreign policy in the 
Far East. Even Theodore Roosevelt had always insisted that 
American interests in the Orient were not worth a war. It was 
true that the Nine-Power Treaty and the Kellogg Pact had 
altered the legal and moral position, but, in believing that 
these alterations did not carry with them an obligation to use 
force against Japanese aggression, Mr. Hoover was traveling 
in company with most of his countrymen. As Stimson had 
himself stated back in November, "The policy of imposing 
sanctions of force, which Hurley suggested as the only thing 
possible, had been rejected by America in its rejection of the 
League of Nations; and America had deliberately chosen to 
rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion 
alone; that this was not the choice of this administration, but 
a deliberate choice of the country long before we came in." 
(Diary, November 14, 1931) 
Debarred from any advocacy of sanctions, Stimson in early 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 245 

1932 was hard put to it to find a policy which would be effec- 
tive. He was finally driven to a double course : a bluff of force 
and a strong restatement of principles. The bluff was not a very 
good one; the statement of principles he considered one of the 
best things he ever did. Let us look first at the bluff. 

Words alone were unlikely to be effective in blocking the 
Japanese. It was necessary that they have some ground for 
concern about the attitude of the Government which spoke 
the words. .Thus far Hurley was clearly right. Even if the 
United States was unwilling to impose sanctions and still more 
unwilling to fight for the "peace of the Pacific," might it not 
be possible to bluff the Japanese? As Stimson put it to Mr. 
Hoover after the Cabinet meeting of January 26, "The only 
difference I could see between his point and mine was the 
reliance which I felt we could put upon America's strength 
both economically and militarily. I quoted Roosevelt's saying, 
'Speak softly and carry a big stick! 7 ... I was against putting 
any threat into words. I thought we had a right to rely upon 
the unconscious elements of our great size and military 
strength; that I knew Japan was afraid of that, and I was 
willing to let her be afraid of that without telling her that we 
were not going to use it against her." 

This was a view that Mr. Hoover did not fully accept. He 
was so much a man of peace that he did not like the notion of 
even unspoken threats of war. Sensitive to criticism from men 
who shared his Quaker convictions, he was frequently eager 
to make it perfectly clear that no economic or warlike measures 
would be taken by his administration against Japan. It was 
typical of his loyalty to Stimson that he held back from any 
such statement throughout the winter of 1932, in deference 
to his Secretary of State's urgent pleading. He further ac- 
cepted Stimson's suggestion that the American Fleet be left 
at Hawaii, where it arrived in mid-February by pure coin- 
cidence, in maneuvers planned and publicly announced the 
previous summer. The fleet duly remained in Hawaii instead of 
returning to its usual west coast bases, and it was probably use- 
ful in restraining the more flagrantly headlong Japanese mili- 
tarists. 

But the policy of bluff on which Stimson was forced to rely 



24.6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was not an easy one to execute, for it was a bluff that could not 
be expressed. The American Government could not intimate 
by word or deed that it favored sanctions ; any such intimation 
was barred by Mr. Hoover's position. Stimson even felt it 
necessary to deny reports circulated privately in Geneva that 
the American Government was coming round to support of 
sanctions. All that was possible was to keep silent on future 
intentions, and the silence was not very impressive. And 
when friendly governments attempted to sound out the Amer- 
ican position, the bluff became still weaker. 

The policy of bluff followed in the winter of 1932 was 
certainly more effective than any public announcement that 
the United States was opposed to sanctions, but that is about 
all that can be said for it, and it may be doubted whether 
Japanese leaders were much surprised when in May Mr. 
Hoover insisted on a public statement opposing sanctions by 
the then Acting Secretary of State. 

Yet in spite of this basic weakness in his position, Stimson 
remained throughout the Shanghai incident the leader of opin- 
ion against Japan. For by a restatement and elaboration of 
the basic position of the United States, toward the end of 
February, he set the tone for the only affirmative action taken 
by the League. This was accomplished in a public letter to 
Senator Borah which was in many ways the most significant 
state paper Stimson ever wrote. 

The Borah letter had many causes. The first was the state 
of American opinion. 

In February and March Stimson was backed by a public 
sentiment against Japan stronger than anything he had behind 
him before or after. American admiration of China was 
strongly reinforced by the exploits of the Nineteenth Route 
Army. Even the dreaded word "sanctions" was now openly 
noised abroad, and a Committee of Citizens led by such men 
as Newton D. Baker and A. Lawrence Lowell began to advo- 
cate the imposition of a trade embargo against Japan. This 
committee represented only a small minority in the country, 
but the indignation to which it appealed was general. 

As he considered the feeling of his countrymen, Stimson 
became more and more convinced of his duty to give official 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 247 

expression to the historic policy and present opinion of his 
nation. He remembered his own annoyance at President Wil- 
son's hands-off attitude toward the violation of Belgium in 
1914. Here was a case of aggression nearly six months old, 
at least as serious as the German attack on Belgium, and one 
which furthermore directly violated treaties to which the 
United States was a party. "As I reflected upon it, it seemed 
to me that in future years I should not like to face a verdict of 
history to the effect that a government to which I had belonged 
had failed to express itself adequately upon -such a situation." 14 

A second reason for clear public protest was the importance 
of remaining loyal to traditional American policy in China. 
During early February there were intimations from Tokyo 
that the Japanese no longer considered the Nine-Power Treaty 
applicable and that China should now be permanently dis- 
membered and her major commercial areas controlled by 
foreigners. Both Japan and China must be shown how far this 
or any similar suggestion was from American policy. 

Third, and perhaps most important, it seemed time for a new 
move in the continuing campaign to mobilize world opinion. 
Secretary Hurley's warning that public opinion would not 
do the job would certainly prove correct unless the moral dis- 
approval of the United States should be reinforced by that of 
other major nations. 

The obvious ground for a new statement was the Nine- 
Power Treaty. The first article of that treaty was precisely 
applicable to the situation in Manchuria; "no human lan- 
guage" could be more clear than its statement of the obliga- 
tion of its signatories "(i) to respect the sovereignty, the inde- 
pendence and the territorial and administrative integrity of 
China and (2) to provide the fullest and most unembarrassed 
opportunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an 
effective and stable government." 

And the obvious partner for a new demarche was Great 
Britain. It was on Mr. Hoover's suggestion that Stimson pre- 
sented his new plan to the British Ambassador on February 
9 and discussed it in detail with Sir John Simon in five trans- 
atlantic telephone calls during the following week, trying to 

14 Far Eastern Crisis, p. 157. 



248 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

persuade the British that the interests of both nations would 
be served by a joint reassertion of the Nine-Power Treaty. 
These conversations were friendly enough, and Sir John ap- 
proved of Stimson's plan in principle. In practice, however, 
he held back. There were various reasons for his reluctance 
to accept Stimson's suggestion some good and some less good. 
Among the good ones were Britain's membership in the 
League, where measures indicating adherence to the non- 
recognition doctrine were pending; it was reasonable that the 
British should pace their actions to those of the League. Among 
the bad ones were Sir John's inability to take Chinese terri- 
torial and administrative integrity very seriously and his feel- 
ing that the question of Shanghai, as a direct threat to Western 
interests, should be considered separately from that of Man- 
churia, which he thought a dangerous subject in view of Jap- 
anese feelings. Such a separation seemed to Stimson wholly 
wrong it would have been a tacit admission that aggression 
in Manchuria was less reprehensible than aggression in an area 
where there were extensive British interests. 

On February 16 the League appeal was duly passed by 
twelve members of the Council not party to the Far Eastern 
struggle. Although very politely worded, this appeal to Japan 
implied support of the nonrecognition doctrine and called 
Japan's attention to her obligation under the Nine-Power 
Treaty. In the days that followed, Stimson finally became 
convinced that the British Government felt reluctant to join 
in his demarche. He was not especially annoyed at this situa- 
tion. For a time he considered abandoning the idea of a new 
American statement, since it would be dangerous to make an 
official appeal or representation to Japan and find that it went 
unsupported by other signatories to the same treaty. 

Then on February 21 he decided on the Borah letter. The 
Japanese had launched a major attack the day before and 
public feeling both at home and abroad was at a new high. It 
would not do to let this moment pass without an American 
statement. At the same time, although he had failed to budge 
Mr. Hoover in his opposition to an embargo, Stimson had 
. the President's strong support for a further effort to mobilize 
world opinion. In order to avoid or at least minimize diplo- 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 249 

matic knifing, Stimson decided to cast his statement in the 
form of an open letter to Senator Borah; he recalled that 
Theodore Roosevelt had often used this technique in similar 
circumstances. On the evening of Washington's Birthday and 
the morning of February 23, with the help of Rogers, Klots, 
and Stanley Hornbeck, 15 the letter was written. It was at once 
approved by the President and by Borah, and on the morning 
of the twenty-fourth it was published. 

The letter to Borah, as Stimson later wrote, "was intended 
for the perusal of at least five unnamed addressees. " It was 
designed to encourage China, enlighten the American public, 
exhort the League, stir up the British, and warn Japan. It 
aimed to do all these things within the framework of a general 
exposition of the basic attitude of the United States toward 
the Far East. The reader who bears these purposes in mind 
will have no difficulty in understanding what lay behind each 
section of the letter, and it is therefore printed below, without 
comment: 



February 23, 1932. 
My dear Senator Borah: 

You have asked my opinion whether, as has been sometimes 
recently suggested, present conditions in China have in any 
way indicated that the "so-called Nine-Power Treaty has be- 
come inapplicable or ineffective or rightly in need of modifica- 
tion, and if so, what I considered should be the policy of this 
Government. 

That policy, enunciated by John Hay in 1899, brought to 
an end the struggle among various powers for so-called spheres 
of interest in China which was threatening the dismember- 
ment of that empire. To accomplish this Mr. Hay invoked 
two principles : ( i ) equality of commercial opportunity among 
all nations in dealing with China, and (2) as necessary to that 
equality the preservation of China's territorial and administra- 
tive integrity. These principles were not new in the foreign 

15 Hornbeck was the chief of the State Department's Division of Far Eastern Affairs 
throughout this period, and in the course of the crisis he became one of Stimson' s most 
trusted advisers. 



250 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

policy of America. They had been the principles upon which 
it rested in its dealings with other nations for many years. In 
the case of China they were invoked to save a situation which 
not only threatened the future development and sovereignty 
of that great Asiatic people, but also threatened to create 
dangerous and constantly increasing rivalries between the other 
nations of the world. War had already taken place between 
Japan and China. At the close of that war three other nations 
intervened to prevent Japan from obtaining some of the re- 
sults of that war claimed by her. Other nations sought and had 
obtained spheres of interest. Partly as a result of these actions a 
serious uprising had broken out in China which endangered 
the legations of all of the powers at Peking. While the attack 
on those legations was in progress, Mr. Hay made an an- 
nouncement in respect to this policy as the principle upon 
which the powers should act in the settlement of the rebellion. 
He said : 

"The policy of the Government of the United States is to 
seek a solution which may bring about permanent safety and 
peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial and administra- 
tive entity, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly powers 
by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the world 
the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of 
the Chinese Empire." 

He was successful in obtaining the assent of the other powers 
to the policy thus announced. 

In taking these steps Mr. Hay acted with the cordial sup- 
port of the British Government. In responding to Mr. Hay's 
announcement, above set forth, Lord Salisbury, the British 
Prime Minister, expressed himself "most emphatically as 
concurring in the policy of the United States." 

For twenty years thereafter the "open door" policy rested 
upon the informal commitments thus made by the various 
powers. But in the winter of 1921 to 1922, at a conference par- 
ticipated in by all of the principal powers which had interests 
in the Pacific, the policy was crystallized into the so-called 
Nine-Power Treaty, which gave definition and precision to 
the principles upon which the policy rested. In the first article 
of that treaty, the contracting powers, other than China, 
agreed ; 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 251 

"i. To respect the sovereignty, the independence and the 
territorial and administrative integrity of China. 

U 2. To provide the fullest and most unembarrassed oppor- 
tunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an effec- 
tive and stable government. 

"3. To use their influence for the purpose of effectually 
establishing and maintaining the principle of equal oppor- 
tunity for the commerce and industry of all nations through- 
out the territory of China. 

"4. To refrain from taking advantage of conditions in China 
in order to seek special rights or privileges which would 
abridge the rights of subjects or citizens of friendly states, 
and from countenancing action inimical to the security of such 



states." 



This treaty thus represents a carefully developed and ma- 
tured international policy intended, on the one hand, to assure 
to all of the contracting parties their rights and interests in 
and with regard to China, and on the other hand, to assure to 
the people of China the fullest opportunity to develop without 
molestation their sovereignty and independence according to 
'the modern and enlightened standards believed to obtain 
among the peoples of this earth. At the time this treaty was 
signed, it was known that China was engaged in an attempt to 
develop the free institutions of a self-governing republic after 
her recent revolution from an autocratic form of government; 
that she would require many years of both economic and 
political effort to that end; and that her progress would 
necessarily be slow. The treaty was thus a covenant of self- 
denial among the signatory powers in deliberate renunciation 
of any policy of aggression which might tend to interfere with 
that development. It was believed and the whole history of 
the development of the "open door" policy reveals that faith 
that only by such a process, under the protection of such an 
agreement, could the fullest interests not only of China but of 
all nations which have intercourse with her best be served. 

During the course of the discussions which resulted in the 
treaty, the chairman of the British Delegation, Lord Balfour, 
had stated that 

"The British Empire Delegation understood that there was 
no representative of any power around the table who thought 



25 2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

that the old practice of 'spheres of interest 7 was either advo- 
cated by any government or would be tolerable to this con- 
ference. So far as the British Government were concerned, 
they had, in the most formal manner, publicly announced that 
they regarded this practice as utterly inappropriate to the 
existing situation." 

At the same time the representative of Japan, Baron Shide- 
hara, announced the position of his Government as follows: 

"No one denies to China her sacred right to govern herself. 
No one stands in the way of China to work out her own great 
national destiny. . . ." 

It must be remembered also that this treaty was one of 
several treaties and agreements entered into at the Washington 
Conference by the various powers concerned, all of which 
were interrelated and interdependent. No one of these treaties 
can be disregarded without disturbing the general understand- 
ing and equilibrium which were intended to be accomplished 
and effected by the group of agreements arrived at in their 
entirety. The Washington Conference was essentially a dis- 
armament conference, aimed to promote the possibility of 
peace in the world not only through the cessation of competi- 
tion in naval armament but also by the solution of various 
other disturbing problems which threatened the peace of the 
world, particularly in the Far East. These problems were all 
interrelated. The willingness of the American Government 
to surrender its then commanding lead in battleship construc- 
tion and to leave its positions at Guam and in the Philippines 
without further fortifications was predicated upon, among 
other things, the self-denying covenants contained in the Nine- 
Power Treaty, which assured the nations of the world not only 
of equal opportunity for their Eastern trade but also against 
the military aggrandizement of any other power at the expense 
of China. One cannot discuss the possibility of modifying or 
abrogating those provisions of the Nine-Power Treaty with- 
out considering at the same time the other promises upon which 
they were really dependent. 

Six years later the policy of self-denial against aggression 
by a stronger against a weaker power, upon which the Nine- 
Power Treaty had been based, received a powerful reinforce- 
ment by the execution by substantially all the nations of the 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 253 

world of the Pact of Paris, the so-called Kellogg-Briand Pact. 
These two treaties represent independent but harmonious steps 
taken for the purpose of aligning the conscience and public 
opinion of the world in favor of a system of orderly develop- 
ment by the law of nations including the settlement of all con- 
troversies by methods of justice and peace instead of by arbi- 
trary force. The program for the protection of China from 
outside aggression is an essential part of any such develop- 
ment. The signatories and adherents of the Nine-Power Treaty 
rightly felt that the orderly and peaceful development of the 
400,000,000 of people inhabiting China was necessary to the 
peaceful welfare of the entire world and that no program 
for the welfare of the world as a whole could afford to neglect 
the welfare and protection of China. 

The recent events which have taken place in China, espe- 
cially the hostilities which having been begun in Manchuria 
have latterly been extended to Shanghai, far from indicating 
the advisability of any modification of the treaties we have 
been discussing, have tended to bring home the vital impor- 
tance of the faithful observance of the covenants therein to all 
of the nations interested in the Far East. It is not necessary 
in that connection to inquire into the causes of the controversy 
or attempt to apportion the blame between the two nations 
which are unhappily involved ; for regardless of cause or 
responsibility, it is clear beyond peradventure that a situation 
has developed which cannot, under any circumstances, be 
reconciled with the obligations of the covenants of these two 
treaties, and that if the treaties had been faithfully observed 
such a situation could not have arisen. The signatories of the 
Nine-Power Treaty and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact who are 
not parties to that conflict are not likely to see any reason for 
modifying the terms of those treaties. To them the real value 
of the faithful performance of the treaties has been brought 
sharply home by the perils and losses. to which their nationals 
have been subjected in Shanghai. 

That is the view of this Government. We see no reason for 
abandoning the enlightened principles which are embodied 
in these treaties. We believe that this situation would have 
been avoided had these covenants been faithfully observed, and 
no evidence has come to us to indicate that a due compliance 



254 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

with them would have interfered with the adequate protection 
of the legitimate rights in China of the signatories of those 
treaties and their nationals. 

On January yth last, upon the instruction of the President, 
this Government formally notified Japan and China that it 
would not recognize any situation, treaty or agreement entered 
into by those Governments in violation of the covenants of 
these treaties, which affected the rights of our Government 
or its citizens in China. If a similar decision should be reached 
and a similar position taken by the other governments of the 
world, a caveat will be placed upon such action which, we 
believe, will effectively bar the legality hereafter of any title 
or right sought to be obtained by pressure or treaty violation, 
and which, as has been shown by history in the past, will even- 
tually lead to the restoration to China of rights and titles of 
which she may have been deprived. 

In the past our Government, as one of the leading powers on 
the Pacific Ocean, has rested its policy upon an abiding faith 
in the future of the people of China and upon the ultimate 
success in dealing with them of the principles of fair play, 
patience, and mutual good will. We appreciate the immensity 
of the task which lies before her statesmen in the development 
of her country and its Government. The delays in her progress, 
the instability of her attempts to secure a responsible govern- 
ment, were foreseen by Messrs. Hay and Hughes and their 
contemporaries and were the very obstacles which the policy 
of the "open door" was designed to meet. We concur with 
those statesmen, representing all the nations in the Washing- 
ton Conference, who decided that China was entitled to the 
time necessary to accomplish her development. We are pre- 
pared to make that our policy for the future. 

Very sincerely yours, 

HENRY L. STIMSON 
The Honorable William E. Borah 
United States Senate 



The Borah letter was published only one day after a Jap- 
anese statement which openly repudiated the whole idea of a 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 255 

strong and independent China. In answer to the League appeal 
of February 16, it was announced that "the Japanese Govern- 
ment do not and cannot consider that China is an 'organized 
people' within the meaning of the Covenant of the League of 
Nations. China has, it is true, been treated in the past by com- 
mon consent as if the expression connoted an organized 
people. But fictions cannot last forever. . . ." 

Thus the lines were drawn. On the one hand stood the 
United States, insistent on the maintenance of China's inde- 
pendence and integrity. On the other was Japan, impatient 
of the "fictions" of the Nine-Power Treaty and determined 
to impose a unilateral solution on the ground that "she believes 
that she is naturally and necessarily in a far better position to 
appreciate the facts than any distant power can possibly be." 
To the man with eyes to see and ears to hear, these words from 
these nations, if adhered to, could only mean that in the long 
run war was inevitable. As Stimson put it in his diary on 
March 9, 1932, "At present it seems to me that if Japan keeps 
up this attitude in which she now is, we are shaping up an 
issue between the two great theories of civilization and eco- 
nomic methods. It looks a little as if Japan had made up her 
mind that industrialization and foreign trade will* not be 
enough for her if she cannot hold it, and is yielding to the 
temptation and thinking that she can make markets for her- 
self in China by force, which means that she must permanently 
exploit China and impose the suzerainty of a dominant race 
upon another race." This would not work; in the long run 
China, "the better race," would frustrate Japan. "But in the 
meanwhile, there will be presented a very sharp issue with our 
policy in the Pacific as exemplified by a long line of steps 
which we have taken beginning in 1844 and leading up to the 
'Open Door' and the Nine-Power Pact. During the course 
of that rivalry it is, in my opinion, almost impossible that there 
should not be an armed clash between two such different 
civilizations." 

Through the decade that followed the dreaded contest came 
ever nearer. American diplomacy was sometimes strong and 
sometimes gentle in the execution of Pacific policy, but the 
basic American stand for treaty rights and a strong China was 



256 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

never deserted. And though there were ups and downs in 
Japanese diplomacy too, the general trend was toward con- 
stant expansion of the claims of 1931 and 1932. Japan knew 
better than the West what was right for China; Japan was 
the proper and natural leader of the new East Asia; Japan 
would deal with reality while the Americans mouthed their 
principles. Through this rising stream of aggressive self-justi- 
fication there ran the increasingly blunt- repudiation of the 
Nine-Power Treaty. First it was unrealistic ; later it was obso- 
lete; in the final Japanese statement of December 7, 1941, it 
was described as "the chief factor responsible for the present 
predicament of East Asia." A careful reading of the diplo- 
matic negotiations that preceded Pearl Harbor can lead to no 
conclusion but that it was American support of China Amer- 
ican refusal to repudiate the principles of Hay, Hughes, Stim- 
son, and Hull which proved the final cause of the breakdown 
of negotiations and the beginning of war. If at any time the 
United States had been willing to concede to Japan a free hand 
in China, there would have been no war in the Pacific. The 
lines of division laid down so clearly in February, 1932, led 
straight to Pearl Harbor. 

_$. CONCLUSION AND RETROSPECT 

In the winter of 1932 Stimson's forecast of war was only 
the expression of the personal fears of an individual. In his 
official capacity he was armed with "spears of straw and swords 
of ice," 10 and he was forced to proceed with a line of policy 
which seems in retrospect to have been very weak. The Borah 
letter, with its implication that continued aggression in the 
Far East might involve a forceful reassertion of powers which 
had been abandoned in 1922, was the strongest statement Stim- 
son made during the Manchurian crisis, and its implied threat 
was at no time developed into action. 

But at least it stood as a clear statement of American policy 
and a definite warning that the United States understood and 
thoroughly disapproved the course of the Japanese. It cer- 

16 An old Chinese saying which Stimson picked up from the perceptive French poet 
and ambassador, Claudel. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 257 

tainly compared favorably with the position taken in the fol- 
lowing week by the British Government. On February 29, 
pressed in the House of Commons for a statement on the re- 
action of His Majesty's Government to the Borah letter, 
Anthony Eden, Sir John Simon's Under Secretary, said, "We 
should certainly not agree to seeing the terms of the Nine- 
Power Treaty flouted, but in face of the assurance given by 
the Japanese Government I can see no justification for our 
assuming that anything of the kind is likely to take place." Mr. 
Eden apparently did not agree with the Borah letter that the 
treaty had already been flouted, and his statement must have 
been consoling to the Japanese Foreign Office; His Majesty's 
Government was still receptive to assurances. 

But Sir John Simon was not prepared to abandon entirely 
his Shanghai-born co-operation with the United States. Hav- 
ing stood aside while Stimson warned the Japanese that they 
were violating the Nine-Power Treaty, he now offered some 
amends. He was not prepared to admit that the Japanese were 
behaving badly, but he would agree to go on record that bad 
behavior was not to be recognized. On March n, 1932, the 
Assembly of the League of Nations adopted without dissent 
the doctrine of nonrecognition. The initiative in this move 
came from Sir John Simon. Stimson promptly expressed his 
satisfaction that so far at least the lead of the United States had 
been followed. 

It was now more clear than ever that moral condemnation 
was to be the main weapon of the Western nations against 
aggression. On a trip to Geneva in April and early May, 
Stimson was able to explore at firsthand the opinions and 
attitudes of the leading statesmen of Europe. Although his 
mission was nominally concerned with disarmament, his prin- 
cipal interest was the treatment of the Far Eastern crisis ; and 
in conversations with Ramsay MacDonald, Sir John Simon, 
Tardieu of France, Matsudaira of Japan, and many others, 
he was able at once to communicate the American attitude and 
to understand more clearly than he had before the feelings 
of his colleagues abroad. What he learned was not encourag- 
ing. 

From the beginning the nonrecognition doctrine had been 



258 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

a compromise result of two conflicting attitudes. One was 
the view of which Stimson was the leader that a united 
moral judgment against Japanese aggression was the necessary 
beginning in preserving the peace treaties. In Stimson's think- 
ing through the winter of 1932, nonrecognition had been 
regarded less as a sufficient step than as a necessary first step. 
But in the opinion of Mr. Hoover it was not a minimum but 
a maximum measure. Although the President once or twice 
suggested the further step of joint withdrawal of ambassadors 
and ministers from Tokyo, he regarded moral pressure as the 
only pressure which would be justified in. dealing with oriental 
affairs and he firmly opposed the suggestion of any economic 
or military action; just as strongly he opposed any economic 
or military threat. Stimson found in Europe that it was Mr. 
Hoover's view and not his own that was widely accepted among 
the diplomats of the major European powers. His own atti- 
tude was echoed only among representatives of the smaller 
nations. 

There was no choice as to what he should do next. The coun- 
try was opposed to sanctions; the President was opposed to 
sanctions ; the major European nations, partly because of a 
covert friendship for Japan and partly for the simple reason 
that Asia was no great concern of theirs, were opposed to sanc- 
tions. Only the power of moral judgment remained. Perhaps 
that would be sufficient; in any case the only course for a man 
who was a soldier and not a critic by temperament was to make 
the best of his bad situation. Stimson set himself at Geneva and 
through the remainder of his service as Secretary of State to 
the purpose of obtaining and maintaining a world judgment 
against Japan. At the best this policy might in fact deter the 
Japanese. At the worst it would lay a firm foundation of prin- 
ciple upon which the Western nations and China could stand 
in a later reckoning. 

During the summer of 1932 the situation in the Far East 
remained relatively quiet. The Japanese had erected a puppet 
government in Manchukuo. That government began to take 
over certain international functions of tax and tariff which 
could not be recognized by governments supporting the non- 
recognition doctrine, and Stimson protested. Further Japanese 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 259 

expansion in North China was undertaken and Stimson pro- 
tested. But the State Department, like the League of Nations, 
was waiting for the report of the Lytton Commission and 
while it waited the Japanese continued undisturbed on their 
way. Reports from the Embassy in Tokyo made it clear that 
they had no intention of changing their course in response 
to any form of pressure from the West. Meanwhile in August 
Stimson was able to take one further step in the development 
of his campaign for collective moral pressure. 

On August 8, 1932, he spoke before the Council of Foreign 
Relations on "The Pact of Paris Three Years of Develop- 
ment." In this speech he developed in detail his conviction 
that the pact marked a new era in international relations, that 
it made war "an illegal thing," and that it thus wholly altered 
the old concept of neutrality, conferring new rights and duties 
on neutral nations. "Hereafter when two nations engage in 
armed conflict either one or both of them must be wrongdoers 
violators of this general treaty law. We no longer draw a 
circle about them and treat them with the punctilios of the 
duelist's code. Instead we denounce them as lawbreakers." 

He went on to argue that this proper and necessary act of 
denunciation was in itself a powerful engine of peace. "The 
Kellogg-Briand Pact provides for no sanctions of force. . . . 
Instead it rests upon the sanction of public opinion which can 
be made one of the most potent sanctions of the world. . . . 
Public opinion is the sanction which lies behind all interna- 
tional intercourse in time of peace. Its efficacy depends upon 
the will of the people of the world to make it effective. If they 
desire to make it effective, it will be irresistible. Those critics 
who scoff at it have not accurately appraised the evolution in 
world opinion since the Great War." 

Though this statement was extreme, it was one which a man 
might fairly make in trying to give life to the only force avail- 
able to him. Certainly public opinion would never become a 
successful sanction unless men believed in it. 

To get complete acceptance of a moral sanction was not easy. 
Enveloped in the pacifistic atmosphere of the twenties, a great 
many Americans and many men in other countries too 
believed that military or economic pressure was itself immoral. 



260 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Though Stimson did not himself accept this position, he was 
bound to admit its force and acknowledge that the Kellogg 
Pact would not have had general support if it had included 
stronger sanctions than that of public opinion. "Any other 
course, through the possibility of entangling the signatories 
in international politics, would have confused the broad simple 
aim of the treaty and prevented the development of that 
public opinion upon which it most surely relies." 

Public opinion was Stimson's only weapon in 1932. Through 
that year and for a long time after he did his utmost to make it 
effective. But it was a vain hope, as he always feared it would 
be. And in this respect his advocacy had been harmful: if 
people were taught that public opinion was "irresistible," they 
might the more easily excuse themselves from using stronger 
weapons. This was a mistake which Stimson himself never 
made, but he was afraid, in 1947, that in his attempt to make 
the best of what he had, he had perhaps given aid and comfort 
to the very irresponsibility he hated. Such were the difficulties 
of arousing Americans to action without frightening them into 
a deeper isolation than ever. 

This speech of August 8 said pitiably little, in the light of 
later events, but its statement of the meaning and danger of 
aggression was exact, and its assertion of the doctrine that war 
was illegal was received with clamorous disfavor in Japan. 
The galled jade winced. 

The Lytton Commission report was signed early in Septem- 
ber and made public at the beginning of October, 1932. It was 
a masterful summary of events in Manchuria and a decisive 
judgment against Japan on all major issues. For the student of 
the origins and meaning of the Manchurian incident it remains 
today the basic document. Its arraignment of Japan was unan- 
swerable. Stimson devoted his energies in the months that 
followed to securing its adoption by the League of Nations. 
When his advice was asked by some of the members of the 
League he suggested that the Assembly act like a judge re- 
ceiving the report of a master in chancery; it should adopt 
the report as its findings and judgment. There can be no doubt 
that American diplomatic pressure toward this end was both 
necessary and effective, for other great powers, and partial- 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 261 

larly Great Britain, continued to edge away from any decisive 
judgment against Japan; and Sir John Simon in December, 
1932, made a speech to the Assembly which could only be 
taken as an attempt to conciliate Japanese opinion by empha- 
sizing out of all proportion those small sections of the Lytton 
Commission report upon which a defense for Japan might be 
based. At last, after months of debate and delay, the League 
of Nations on February 24, with Japan alone dissenting, 
adopted a report accepting in full the findings of the Lytton 
Commission and refusing to recognize the puppet regime in 
Manchuria. As it had done seventeen months before, the 
League recommended the evacuation of Japanese troops from 
all positions outside the railway zone and the re-establishment 
of a genuinely Chinese regime in Manchuria. On the following 
day Stimson completed his record of co-operation with the 
League by a formal statement expressing general approval of 
all its findings and firm support of the doctrine of nonrecog- 
nition. One month later the Japanese gave notice of withdrawal 
from the League of Nations. A year and a half of debate, 
conciliation, warning, investigation, and judgment had ended 
with no greater material result than the nonrecognition of a 
conquest whose fruits the Japanese Government continued to 
enjoy unmolested. 

In assessing the accomplishment of peace-loving statesmen 
throughout the world in dealing with the crisis of aggression 
in Manchuria, it is not easy to come to any final judgment on 
responsibilities, successes, and failures. It is a fact that aggres- 
sion was not prevented. If the Japanese had been content with 
their Manchurian conquest, they might have remained at 
peace with the world as they had done after the similar con- 
quest of Korea, and the nonrecognition doctrine must in time 
have become merely a dead letter. The brave hopes for moral 
condemnation as a policy effective in itself can find little justi- 
fication in subsequent history. It was hard for Stimson in 
1947 to recapture the atmosphere of the opinion, in which 
he and General McCoy had agreed early in 1933, that "the 
policy of careful, nonirritating but firm assistance in lining up 
the powers against Japan is the one that is going to win out, 
and the moral pressure upon Japan is going to be really more 



262 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

effective than the economic pressure which she is up against 
in having bitten off more than she can chew." (Diary, Janu- 
ary 14, 1933) He had made a mistake which he clearly 
described fourteen years later. "What happened after World 
War I was that we lacked the courage, to enforce the authori- 
tative decision of the international world. We agreed with the 
Kellogg Pact that aggressive war must end. We renounced it 
and we condemned those who might use it. But it was a moral 
condemnation only. We thus did not reach the second half of 
the question what will you do to an aggressor when you 
catch him? If we had reached it, we should easily have found 
the right answer, but that answer escaped us for it implied a 
duty to catch the criminal and such a choice meant war. . . . 
Our offense was thus that of the man who passed by on the 
other side." 17 Seen in the retrospect of 1947, therefore, the 
doctrine of nonrecognition and moral condemnation was 
wholly inadequate. 

But from another point of view Stimson's success in securing 
a unanimous judgment against Japan and a nearly unanimous 
adoption of the nonrecognition doctrine seemed to him perhaps 
the greatest constructive achievement of his public life. The 
United States, with him as spokesman, had taken a leading 
position in organizing the opinion of the world, and by this 
leadership there had been secured a united front against 
approval of conquest by military force. This united front did 
not prevent aggression or punish it or even act as an effective 
discouragement to further aggressors. But it prevented any 
acquiescence by peace-loving powers in a return to the jungle 
law of international diplomacy before the First World War. 
If it were true, as Stimson believed in March, 1932, that 
Japanese aggression must inevitably lead to war, it was also 
true that the doctrine of nonrecognition laid the cornerstone 
for a righteous stand on principles of law and order by the 
nations which in the end combined to win the Second World 
War. The doctrine of nonrecognition was not so much wrong 
as insufficient, and its insufficiency was plainly recognized by 
Stimson long before the outbreak of the war. 

And of course from another aspect it seemed to Stimson in 

17 "The Nuremberg Trial," Foreign Affairs, January, 1947. 



THE FAR EASTERN CRISIS 263 

1947 that too harsh a judgment against the doctrine of moral 
condemnation would be unjustified by the events of 1931 to 
1933. The effectiveness of any sanction, moral, economic, or 
military, rested on the unity and will with which it was 
executed. The moral condemnation of Japan in 1933 was not 
truly united or genuine. It was never in the minds of many of 
the statesmen who supported it anything better than a lightning 
rod for the resentment of the people of the world. The 
righteous anger which moved Stimson was not shared, to put 
it mildly, by Sir John Simon. It was not accidental that Stim- 
son's name alone became pre-eminently known and hated by 
the militarists of Japan. Whether the Japanese could have 
been brought to reason if Stimson had had an "opposite 
number" of his own opinion and temper in the British Foreign 
Office, he could not say. Perhaps no moral judgment, however 
swift or united, would have been effective, and before any 
larger measures could have been adopted both the people and 
the President of the United States would have had to change 
their positions, and so would the Prime Minister of Great 
Britain. 

As a test of the League of Nations, the Manchurian crisis 
was not wholly fair; it involved a distant land in a part of the 
world with which the Western nations that dominated the 
League were little concerned ; it occurred in a time of general 
European crisis; it deeply affected a nonmember, the United 
States; the member of the League most closely affected was 
led in foreign affairs by a statesman undisturbed by the abstract 
noun aggression. Stimson always believed that in the face of 
those obstacles the League performed surprisingly well. 

His own feeling was that the final failure lay as much in his 
own country as anywhere. For in the end the basic deterrent 
to aggression is the willingness of the nations to take action 
against the aggressor. No more than any other nation was the 
United States prepared for action in 1932. The moral sense of 
the nation was sound, and in the end, the United States re- 
deemed by force the principles of the Borah letter. But it was 
a slow awakening, and if the Japanese had been able to take 
China as easily as they took Manchuria, it might never have 
come at all. Fortunately it did not work out that way. 



CHAPTER X 

The Tragedy of Timidity 



I. DISARMAMENT A SURFACE ISSUE 

THE American economic folly of which the war debts 
were the most striking example was fully matched in the 
political field by the extraordinary retreat from responsibility 
which took place after the repudiation of Mr. Wilson's 
League. Stimson never shared the view of some Frenchmen 
that this withdrawal was the only major cause of the failure 
of Versailles; the tragedy of the postwar decades, as he saw 
it, was that not one but every great power was guilty of in- 
credible folly. But it was certainly his belief that the American 
contribution to failure was as great as that of any other nation. 
When they rejected the peace treaty in 1919, the Americans 
became the first to reject the burden of the peacemaker, and 
the foreign policy of the United States for twenty years after 
that decision was hobbled and ineffective. 

The political history of postwar Europe can easily be read 
as a series of great hopes meanly lost. It was this reading 
certainly that seemed accurate to Stimson as he looked back 
fifteen years later at the two critical years with which he was 
personally familiar 1931 and 1932. Although there were 
other crises in other years, it seemed to him quite possible that 
the later hist9rian would decide that the central turning 
point the moment at which the balance shifted from the 
building of peace to the vain effort to prevent war was the 
moment in early 1933 when the political feebleness of the 
democracies was rewarded by the appointment of Adolf Hitler 
as Chancellor of the German Reich. Perhaps the events of 
1931 and 1932 were already beyond the control of the states- 

364 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 265 

men then charged with affairs. Yet as Stimson looked back it 
was a matter of no great difficulty to see what should have been 
done. More astonishing still, it had been perfectly easy even 
in 1931 to see what was needed and the responsible statesmen 
in private conversations repeatedly told each other the answer. 
But it happened that each man was at his best in giving advice, 
not in taking it. 

A major focus of European negotiations in 1931 and 1932 
was the question of disarmament. This was the honorable 
legacy of the peace settlement; it had been the intention of the 
victorious statesmen so to organize Europe that the need for 
armies and navies would gradually diminish and eventually 
disappear. There was an assurance of this intention in the 
Versailles Treaty, a fact which the disarmed Germans never 
permitted their conquerors to forget. During the 1 920*8 the 
discussions of disarmament were dilatory and inconclusive, 
reviving when men like MacDonald, Briand, and Stresemann 
were in office and dying down when more conservative leaders 
had control. But by 1931 the hope of tax relief and the shining 
vision of swords beaten into plowshares or, in a later meta- 
phor even less scientific, guns churned into butter had been 
so long held out to the world that further delay would have 
been confession of failure. It is a frequent characteristic of 
diplomacy that it objects much less to failure than it does to 
the confession thereof, and therefore it was agreed that a full- 
dress World Disarmament Conference should be held at 
Geneva in the spring of 1932. The discovery of a political 
leader in a major country who honestly and confidently ex- 
pected great results from this conference would not, in 1931, 
have been an easy task. 

Yet there remained some statesmen, and a multitude of 
private citizens, who believed that effective reduction in arma- 
ments was so logical and so desirable, and so certain to con- 
tribute to prosperity and peace, that only selfishness and 
stupidity could stand in its way. They believed that a frontal 
attack on the problem might overwhelm the resistance of 
narrow nationalism, and they welcomed the Disarmament 
Conference as a chance for launching such an attack. 



266 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

To Stimson this view never seemed realistic ; his own con- 
viction was that armaments were less a cause than a result of 
international insecurity, and he was not optimistic about the 
prospects for disarmament unless and until the major political 
difficulties of Europe should have been materially eased. The 
crux of the Disarmament Conference would be land arma- 
ments air forces were still a somewhat secondary element, 
and naval strength had been limited at the London Conference 
almost beyond the point of political practicability. Land 
armaments were almost wholly a European problem a prob- 
lem affecting the relations of France and Italy, Italy and 
Yugoslavia, central Europe and Russia, and, most important 
of all, Germany and France. The principal concessions in any 
land disarmament would have to come from the French, 
possessors of the strongest and best-equipped army on the con- 
tinent. What prospect there was that France would agree to 
disarm until some at least of the reasons for which- she kept an 
army were liquidated, Stimson was never able to see. And since 
the United States was in 1931 neither a factor of any weight 
whatever in land armaments themselves nor, in her own view, 
a party to the issues which lay behind the existence of large 
armies in Europe, Stimson was not eager to take the lead in 
urging prompt and plentiful disarmament. To do so, he felt, 
would merely obscure the realities of the situation, and without 
any compensating result. His position was clearly stated in 
January, 1931, in a note to the British Ambassador refusing 
to have the United States assume the main burden of prepara- 
tion for the Conference. 

"We feel that it will be difficult at best to produce a 
successful result in the Conference, but it will be wholly im- 
possible unless the representatives of the leading Powers in 
Europe are willing themselves to meet or arrange a series of 
conversations beforehand for the purpose of preparation. 
Thus far there has been no intimation whatever of willingness 
on the part of France, Italy and Germany, the three Powers 
most directly interested in land disarmament, to get together 
and grapple with the fundamental questions which lie at the 
bottom of such disarmament. This was the course which the 
British Government and the American Government pursued 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 267 

in the preparation for the London Naval . Conference where 
the issues were much simpler and fewer, and we feel that except 
for that previous preparation we might easily have failed in 
the Naval Conference. This kind of preparation cannot be 
done by third persons, but only by the great Powers themselves 
as principals. . . . m 

And when in 1931, in fulfillment of his fears, the Europeans 
made no progress toward the solution of the political diffi- 
culties, Stimson became gloomy about the prospects of success 
in disarmament. At the end of the year he refused a request 
from a friend to make a speech about the coming Conference; 
"I told him that under the situation I did not think that any 
member of the Government could make a real statement 
without dashing the hopes of the world, the situation being 
that for a year we had been doing all we could to get the 
nations who had the future of that conference in their hands to 
lay the foundations for a successful conference and they hadn't 
done it." (Diary, November 13, 1931) 

Thus in Stimson's view the problem of disarmament was 
secondary to political questions. The limiting factors on all 
his work for naval restrictions had been political ; either the 
responsible statesmen themselves feared further limitations 
because they feared other nations, or, as so often in the case of 
Americans, they were limited by what they thought or knew 
their people would not accept. 

Land disarmament was surrounded by similar difficulties, 
European in origin. And so Stimson's main effort for disarma- 
ment in 1931 and 1932 was a double one: first, to persuade the 
Europeans to take another and less narrow look at their politi- 
cal difficulties, and second, to exert the limited strength of 
his personal diplomacy in helping them to come closer to- 
gether. So far as time and his abilities permitted, he played 
the role of honest broker, never suggesting a specific solution 
but always endeavoring to show the Germans, the French, 
and the Italians how their attitudes would seem to the man on 
the other side. It was a small service, but it was one in which 
he learned a good deal about Europe and her political leaders 
These labors were carried out partly in Washington but prin- 

1 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1931, I, 482. 



268 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

cipally in two visits to Europe, one in the summer of 1931 and 
the second nine months later, to Geneva in the opening days of 
the Disarmament Conference. 



2. THE FAILURE OF STATESMANSHIP 

The personalities and problems of Europe in 1931 and 1932 
were less significant for themselves than for the way in which 
they illustrated the sort of diplomatic impasse into which 
nations and leaders may work themselves when under the 
influence of nationalism. 

In Italy were Benito Mussolini and Count Dino Grandi, his 
youthful Foreign Minister. It seemed ironical, looking back, 
but in this period Mussolini was one of the most ardent and 
least inconsistent advocates of disarmament in all Europe. 
When Stimson met him, he at first played his role as Duce 
rather stiffly. "He would turn to Vitetti [the interpreter] and 
say something in Italian and Vitetti would say in invariably 
the same formula, 'The Chief of the Government says so and 
so and so and so.' So the interview was decidedly formal, more 
or less like Alice in Wonderland in that pose. I felt a little as 
if he might say 'Off with his head' like the Queen of Hearts." 2 
But Mussolini was not then, as Stimson saw him, what he 
later became, and he was capable of a less rigid attitude. A 
few days later he took the Stimsons for a motorboat ride; "he 
showed his attractive side and we both liked him very much." 
On the question of disarmament he was emphatic that "Italy 
stood for disarmament and peace," and he suited his actions, 
in this period, to those words and not to his others about martial 
glory. Disarmament would of course have increased the rela- 
tive strength of Italy, so he was surrendering very little. But 
his conduct of negotiations for arms limitation was less fraudu- 
lent than the maneuverings of communist Russia and, later, of 
Hitlerite Germany. He was assisted by a Foreign Minister 
who was too good and wise a man to be tolerated when 
Mussolini shifted his ground. None of the ministers with 
whom Stimson talked in Europe had a clearer understanding 
of the major problems of the continent than Dino Grandi. At 

2 Memorandum of interview with Mussolini, July 9, 1931. 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 269 

London in 1930 Grand! had been inexperienced and not very 
useful; a year later he had greatly matured he was candid 
but tactful and extremely friendly. It was on his initiative and 
as a result of his diplomatic skill that later in 1931 there was 
proposed and accepted a one-year truce on all naval construc- 
tion this was useful to Italy of course, for she was poor, but 
it was useful to the rest of the world as well. 

Mussolini and Grandi together gave Stimson a clear picture 
of Italian policy in this period. Italy was for peace and dis- 
armament; Italy feared and opposed "French hegemony" in 
Europe; Italy stood for "a balance of power," "side by side" 
with Great Britain; Italy was friendly to Weimar Germany. 
Stimson warned Grandi "that they should nevertheless be 
careful that their theory of the balance of power did not lead 
to another alignment of two groups of nations . . . for that 
would be the surest way of bringing about competition and 
ultimate war." 3 There is no record of what Grandi said in 
reply to this warning. 

From an American standpoint, the Italians in 1931 and 1932 
were of all the great Continental powers the least difficult. 
Relations between the two countries were good. Fascism, as 
Stimson pointed out to Grandi, was a form of government 
foreign to the American spirit. Grandi explained that he had 
become a Fascist in the early twenties because he saw the 
whole framework of society collapsing under attack from the 
left. Stimson replied that Americans could understand from 
their frontier experience that in a time of lawlessness there 
might be need for vigilantes, but the persistence of arbitrary 
power was something else again. It held the seeds of grave 
danger, not to Italy alone, but to her neighbors. Grandi did 
not disagree; he hoped the regime would become less rigid 
now that real civic danger had disappeared. The grim future 
of fascism was hidden from both men. 

It was not until 1935 that Mussolini deserted the ranks of 
the peacemakers, and not until 1940 that he crossed his Rubicon 
and stabbed the French nation in the back. This early Musso- 
lini seemed to Stimson worthy of remembrance in 1947, f r 
whatever his excesses and his absurdities as Italian dictator, he 

3 Memorandum of conversation with Grandi, July 12, 1931- 



270 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was in those years, in his foreign policy, a sound and useful 
leader, no more aggressive in his nationalism than many a 
democratic statesman. The corruption of mind and spirit which 
led to his later criminal aggression may have been implicit 
in his career and course when Stimson knew him. If so, it 
escaped the observation of the traveling American. 

The Germans of 1931 were equally interesting, more com- 
plex, and vastly more important. Beaten in 1918 and stripped 
on the east of much territory which was clearly German in its 
population and tradition, the Germany of 1931 had a griev- 
ance, and in the view of the Americans and the British, people 
and leaders alike, much of the German grievance was well 
founded. At least since 1923, Germany had borne herself 
before the world as a good loser; she had initiated and signed 
the Locarno Pact, joined the League, and paid her reparations 
until further payment would have meant general ruin. Later 
disclosures were to cast a doubt on some at least of this German 
virtue, but the sentiment of the ordinary American and 
Stimson's sentiment in the summer of 1931 was that the 
Weimar Republic deserved the assistance and support of all 
who loved peace, if only to preserve it as a guardian against 
that other Germany which few and certainly not Stimson 
had forgotten. 

The two leading figures in German when Stimson came to 
visit were President von Hindenburg and Chancellor Heinrich 
Bruening; with these men Stimson talked as a soldier. Presi- 
dent von Hindenburg was a man who had gained great status 
in the eyes of the English-speaking nations since the war, and 
Stimson's meeting with him measured up to high expectations. 
The interview was confined to generalities; Stimson refused 
to argue the question of war guilt which Hindenburg vigor- 
ously raised he was defending the German Army, however, 
and not the German Government. Hindenburg seemed to be 
determined to persist in his guidance of the republic along 
peaceful paths, and Stimson was severely shocked the next year 
when he turned Germany over to Von Papen and then to 
Hitler. He always believed that these terrible steps were the 
result not of Prussian calculation but of simple senility and 
ignorant fear. 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 271 

Stimson and Bruening found that they had been opposite 
each other in the same sector of the lines in 1918; it was not 
hard for both to agree that war is a poor method for the settle- 
ment of disputes. Bruening was prepared to admit some, though 
not all, of Stimson's strictures against Prussian militarism; he 
was clearly not a militarist himself. He was under heavy pres- 
sure from the extremes of left and right, and Stimson was struck 
by a phenomenon which later became painfully familiar: 
extremism begets extremism. In Bruening's effort to stabilize 
the German Republic his equal enemies were the Nazis and 
the Communists, and on the whole it was the latter who were 
more powerful in 1931. Different though they might be, the 
Communists and the Nazis were united in preferring civil war 
to the success of parliamentary democracy. Stimson somewhat 
discounted Bruening's description of the menace of com- 
munism, but he was quite persuaded that the Communists in 
Weimar Germany were not an imaginary danger. 

The foreign policy of Bruening's government was the result 
of its internal strains. Having won widespread support in their 
demand for a relaxation of the Versailles Treaty, and possess- 
ing an unbreakable case in logic and sentiment for further 
disarmament by the victorious powers, the Germans were 
beginning to lose patience, and there were already signs of 
the recrudescence of a more truculent attitude. Stimson ex- 
pressed himself forcefully against such a turn of policy. 
Referring to the specific issue of disarmament, he urged Bruen- 
ing not to impair his "unimpeachable case before the moral 
opinion of the world" by any "folly in the building of pocket 
battleships, " and that for Germany "defenselessness was the 
best protection in my opinion and would sooner or later force 
the [other] countries to reason. m The answer of Bruening to 
this counsel is not recorded. 

To Stimson in 1931 it seemed as if all Germans, and their 
leaders particularly, were gripped by fear fear of financial 
collapse, fear of revolution, fear of giving offense to the naive 
and innocent but very powerful Americans, fear of the im- 
perialistic French. Nowhere in Germany was there a leader 
who would stand up and assert, within the framework of 

4 Memorandum of conversation with Bruening, July 23, 1931. 



372 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

democracy, that the Weimar Republic proposed to endure and 
prosper. Bruening had personal courage but he seemed to 
lack confidence, and Stimson's diary records an effort to give 
warning of the danger, once again from soldier to soldier. "I 
told him that I thought of this proposition: 'Suppose it was 
1918 and you were commanding a machine-gun patrol on a 
dark night against a powerful enemy. Rumors began to come 
in that the outpost on your right was driven back and the out- 
post on your left was captured and your ammunition was run- 
ning low. Would you tell all those rumors to your men?' He 
said of course not. I then said, 'Why don't you behave that 
way now? That is the way for Germany to treat the present 
crisis.' " 5 Perhaps the situation was beyond the repair of 
leadership, even then, and Stimson was not prepared to judge 
adversely a man who behaved throughout with the personal 
dignity and moral fiber shown by Bruening. But he missed in 
Germany the sort of voice that Americans were used to hear- 
ing in times of crisis. Perhaps that sort of voice could not be 
heard or understood in Germany; he did not know. 

In any event, the key to disarmament, and the key to the 
political adjustment from which disarmament might come, 
lay less in Germany than in France, and it was the French 
attitudes that were most difficult and distressing to Americans 
in 1931 and 1932. The policy of France was security not 
peace, or disarmament, or virtue, or friendship, but security. 
At its most intransigent this policy involved a rigid insistence 
upon every last provision of the Versailles Treaty; at its most 
reasonable, it was concerned only with the prevention of a third 
German war of aggression. In 1931' the economic depression 
had increased the relative strength of France by striking at 
the financial stability of Austria, Germany, and England. 
The French had then alienated other nations by using this new 
economic power as a weapon of diplomacy. In 1931, as for a 
decade past, the French seemed poor winners to the Anglo- 
Saxons, unforgiving and suspicious toward their defeated 
enemies, demanding and even hostile toward their allies. 
Some Frenchmen were more co-operative than others; it 
was one thing to face Poincare or Tardieu, and quite another 

5 Memorandum of conversation with Bruening, July 26, 1931. 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 273 

to deal with Briand and Harriot. But as a nation, the French 
were determined not to be caught out by a new outbreak of 
nationalism in Germany; to the Anglo-Saxons they also seemed 
determined to pursue a line of policy perfectly designed to 
develop exactly the sort of Germany they most feared. 

It happened that Stimson's visit to France in 1931 occurred 
during a period of financial crisis, and he was unable to talk 
much of general European problems. It was not a good time 
for candid and searching discussion in any case, for the French 
had been annoyed by the Hoover moratorium and the visiting 
American Secretary of State was pointedly snubbed. It was 
not until later in the year that he was able to explore French 
attitudes in detail ; in October Premier Laval arrived in 
Washington for conversations looking toward a better under- 
standing between the two countries. 

Of all of Stimson's foreign friends as Secretary of State, 
the man whose later career most severely shocked him was 
Pierre Laval. It was not easy to look back fairly at the Laval of 
1931 and 1932, across years in which he recorded himself as a 
villain like lago, glorying in unrepentant treason. Yet it is 
written in Stimson's diary, as a careful and sober judgment 
of Laval in July, 1931, that he showed himself "an able, force- 
ful man and I think also a sincere man. In his talks with me he 
was extremely frank and . . . manifested the utmost friend- 
liness." In Washington he showed to even better advantage. 
To his candor he added good humor and tact, and when Sena- 
tor Borah, with his usual disregard for the diplomatic com- 
fort of the State Department, chose the occasion of Laval's 
visit to let fly with a speech denouncing France and all her 
works, it was Laval's calmness and good sense which permitted 
Stimson to bring the two men together for a conversation that 
was amiable and witty on both sides. 

But Laval was not prepared to shift the policy of France. 
He knew and admitted that parts of the Versailles Treaty 
were nonsense. He said that "its effect upon Central Europe 
was an absurdity, but it was a political impossibility now to 
change it." In fact from the French point of view any changes 
at all in the Versailles Treaty were politically impossible, and 
Laval suggested that all talk of revision be temporarily aban- 



274 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

doned, "that we obtain a political moratorium, perhaps for ten 
years, and that possibly in that time French minds would cool 
down and possibly some solution could be made then." Stim- 
son replied, after emphasizing his belief that German opinion 
was reconciled to the French boundaries of 1918, though not to 
the eastern settlement, that "to me the political moratorium 
without an adjustment was an immoral suggestion, and it 
also flew in the face of history. I referred to the oscillations of 
history back and forth between Germany and France, and 
pointed out that the Versailles Treaty froze an extreme oscilla- 
tion which was unfavorable to Germany at the farthest point of 
unfavorability. . . . Any attempt to perpetuate such an oscil- 
lation would meet with failure. I frankly referred to the his- 
tory of 1806 after the battle of Jena. France had never been 
so strong nor Germany so prostrate. Yet in eight years had 
come the battle of Leipzig and the overthrow of France." 
There is no record that Laval replied to this comment. 

Thus in his conversations with the leaders of Europe Stim- 
son had been able to give them all frank and friendly advice 
which seemed to him sound and persuasive even after fifteen 
years. The Italians gained nothing by their opposition to 
France; the Germans of the Weimar Republic gained nothing 
by their impatience and their lack of confidence; the French 
lost to force a hundred times what they might have freely con- 
ceded to argument. And it seemed clear to him that the French 
particularly had still held it in their power, in 1931, to extend 
the necessary hand of reconciliation to a relatively peaceful 
Germany. What Laval had called a political impossibility 
was in fact the only course available to France under the 
conditions of 1931, if she wished to preserve the friendship 
not only of Germany but of Great Britain and the United 
States. 

If our analysis could end here, American readers might 
escape with the comfortable feeling that an American Secre- 
tary of State had duly fulfilled his traditional function of 
benignly disseminating good advice to blind and selfish 
foreigners. But the main purpose of what has been written 
above is merely to set the background for another failure, 

Memorandum of conversation with Laval, October 23, 1931. 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 275 

one which In some ways underlay all the others, a failure on 
the part of the United States of America. 

To each of the nations of Europe Stimson was able to give a 
warning that that nation's policy was incomplete. It need not be 
supposed that the Europeans were unable to reciprocate. Pierre 
Laval, for example, talked with Mr. Hoover and Stimson 
about disarmament. France, he remarked, insisted on security 
it was the French way of saying what Stimson himself often 
said, that political settlement must come before any general 
abandonment of arms. But arms were not in the French view 
the only source of security; if the integrity of France and 
other countries could be adequately guaranteed by other 
means, France would find it easier to disarm. And what Laval 
asked of the United States was not very much not an alliance, 
not a promise to join in resisting aggression, not even a com- 
mitment to maintain benevolent neutrality. What Laval asked 
was what Briand had asked before him, but unlike Briand, 
Laval connected his request with disarmament. He asked a 
consultative pact a promise to consult with France in the 
event of a breach of the Kellogg Pact. He said that such a 
promise "would be taken in France as a great gesture which 
would help very much the possibility of any disarmament." 
But when Laval turned to Mr. Hoover to ask what he thought 
of this idea, "the President replied at once that he thought it 
was a political impossibility." There were undertones of calcu- 
lation in what Laval suggested; the consultative pact might 
have meant more to Frenchmen than it seemed to, and it 
might have committed the United States to more than con- 
sultation this was an old and well-worn issue by 1931. But 
the phrasing of Stimson's record is striking. Laval had asked 
of the United States a concession that must have seemed to 
him small indeed compared to Stimson's suggesting that he 
consent to revision of the Versailles Treaty. He had received 
from the American President the same helpless reply that he 
had himself given earlier it was a "political impossibility." 
And Mr. Hoover had spoken "at once," with the certainty of 
intimate knowledge. 

Perhaps no major nation was ever asked for a smaller con- 
tribution to peace and disarmament. In the light of what had 



2 y6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

happened in 1917 and what happened again in 1941, the 
American refusal to "consult" with other nations in the event 
of threatened war seems nothing short of madness. Whatever 
the occult and dangerous implication of consultation, what- 
ever the possible entanglement involved in an agreement to 
talk, it seemed flatly incredible that the American people could 
so far have forgotten the realities of life as to believe that those 
dangers could outweigh the other danger general war. Yet 
there it was; a consultative pact was indeed a "political 
impossibility," as Mr. Hoover said, and as Stimson himself 
had said in London a year before. Anything, of whatever 
nature, which implied the slightest responsibility for European 
peace, was anathema to the American people and doubly 
damned in the eyes of their watchdogs in the American Senate. 
The full meaning of this American position can only be 
understood if we consider briefly how it appeared to Euro- 
peans. To see the European view in its full fury, it is necessary 
to turn to French writers of the twenties and thirties, from the 
ancient volcano Clemenceau on down, but Stimson's diary con- 
tains an adequate summary from a cooler source : his counselor 
of forty years, Elihu Root. "He was getting afraid [that] the 
nations of Europe were crystallizing this hostility against us, 
and he summed up this as the various counts of their indict- 
ment against us. First, that we had made a lot of money out 
of the war and then insisted upon a rigid payment of the debts 
which they owed us when they were poor and hard up. Second, 
that the League of Nations was their engine to preserve peace 
and, although we had designed it, we had refused to join it. 
Third, the same way with the World Court. It was our baby 
but we refused to join it. It was another engine of peace, which 
we had turned our back on. Fourth, that we insisted upon re- 
taining the doctrine of neutrality and would thus, in case of any 
new war, make ourselves the arsenal for the combatants and 
also make money out of it, and thereby would make it impos- 
sible to carry out any arrangement for peace which the Euro- 
pean nations might have succeeded in making, like the ques- 
tion of embargo against an aggressor." (Diary, December 12, 
1930) Mr. Root had a fifth point on the technicalities of dis- 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 277 

armament, and Stimson defended the American stand on this 
last point. 

The first point, about money-making and war debts, was 
framed in somewhat prejudicial language, but it undoubtedly 
represented a widely held opinion. And counts two, three, and 
four of Mr. Root's indictment were unanswerable, as Stimson 
saw it. The American nation had fought a war to "make the 
world safe for democracy" and had then proceeded to reject 
all responsibility for maintaining any safety whatever. To the 
French particularly, feeling as they did that Germany was an 
enduring menace, and that the American desertion had shifted 
to France the burden of maintaining law and order, it seemed 
as if the United States was the primary responsible party in 
the breakdown of the Versailles settlement. If the Ameri- 
cans were annoyed when France stubbornly refused to make 
concessions to the Weimar Republic, the Fr.ench were infuri- 
ated when the faithless and irresponsible Americans right- 
eously demanded that France should disarm. 

The feeling between France and the United States was dupli- 
cated with some modifications between France and Great 
Britain. The United Kingdom too, in 1931, was unwilling 
to give further guarantees to the French. The British position 
was much less culpable than the American, of course, because 
Great Britain was already committed in large measure by the 
League Covenant and Locarno. But, the question of blame 
apart, the situation was the same. 

Indeed all the major powers by 1931 had entrenched them- 
selves in self-righteous attitudes which pointed the finger of 
responsibility at someone else. Each one was in large measure 
right. More than that, the cooler statesmen of each nation 
knew what concession, in abstract fairness, their own countries 
should make. Only they knew too or thought they knew that 
these concessions were "political impossibilities." 

This was the situation that Stimson had seen at firsthand, 
and had lived with for almost a year, when he remarked to 
Bruening in Geneva, on April 17, 1932, "that the situation 
in the world seemed to me like the unfolding of a great Greek 
tragedy, where we could see the march of events and know 



278 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

what ought to be done, but [seemed] to be powerless to pre- 
vent its marching to its grim conclusion." 

The unrolling of a Greek tragedy may in the end purge the 
emotions of the beholder, but its working out is seldom pleas- 
ant for the protagonists. It was probably fortunate for Stimson, 
therefore, that he was constitutionally unfitted to play a con- 
sciously tragic role. All his life he had been a man of action, 
and in 1931 and 1932 he made virtues of necessities in most of 
what he did in foreign relations. Reduced to the role of honest 
broker, he told himself and others that this was a useful 
activity, and even in 1947 he remained persuaded that it was 
the best he could do, given the circumstances. In minor matters, 
furthermore, it produced visible results the standstill agree- 
ment of July, 1931, was a small thing, but Stimson was proud 
of his part in it. Similarly his work at Geneva, in 1932, pro- 
duced no disarmament, but he believed that it improved the 
atmosphere. Compared to what it might have been if the 
American nation had chosen otherwise, the influence of an 
American Secretary of State was small, but it was much 
greater than nothing at all. 

Fortunately for his peace of mind in 1947, the record of his 
service as Secretary of State did not indicate that he had been 
wholly converted to false hopes. He had done what he could 
to help Europe keep her peace, within the boundaries of exist- 
ing American opinion. But he had also done what he could 
to enlarge those boundaries, although in this area the powers 
of a Secretary of State are limited. His fight for the World 
Court was a typical part of this second battle ; a more striking 
and personal effort is to be found in a speech on the Kellogg 
Pact delivered on August 8, 1932, before the Council on 
Foreign Relations. The bulk of this speech was devoted to a 
study of the pact as it had been applied to the Far East, but it 
contained a paragraph which was designed to give to the 
leaders of France some part at least of what they had been ask- 
ing for. 

"Another consequence which follows this development of 
the Briand-Kellogg Treaty ... is that consultation between 
the signatories of the pact when faced with the threat of its 
violation becomes inevitable. Any effective invocation of the 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 279 

power of world opinion postulates discussion and consultation. 
As long as the signatories of the pact support the policy which 
the American Government has endeavored to establish during 
the past three years of arousing a united and living spirit of 
public opinion as a sanction of the pact . . . consultations 
will take place as an incident to the unification of that opinion. 
The course which was followed in the Sino-Japanese contro- 
versy last winter shows how naturally and inevitably consulta- 
tion was resorted to in this effort to mobilize the public opinion 
of the world." 

This assurance was strictly limited to consultation for the 
exercise of moral suasion by involving "the power of world 
opinion" ; compared to the sort of consultative pact the French 
would have liked, it offered perhaps very little. But it offered 
more than Americans had felt free to give before, and it was 
reinforced by the fact that Stimson was able to point out that 
"each of the platforms recently adopted by the two great party 
conventions at Chicago contains planks endorsing the principle 
of consultation." This result had been achieved by earnest and 
nonpartisan negotiations in which Stimson had played a major 
role, and the principle as he expressed it in the speech of 
August 8 was one which he had worked out in long delibera- 
tion over the problem of widening the American zone of 
influence without overstepping what the people and the Presi- 
dent as their agent would permit. It seemed to him worthy of 
notice that the principle of consultation marked a position so 
advanced that even under Franklin Roosevelt it was allowed 
to lapse. 

But for any useful effect on disarmament, it was already 
too late. Already in August, 1932, it seemed clear that the race 
against time in Germany was being lost. Bruening had fallen 
in May; by August Von Papen's government had huffily with- 
drawn from the Disarmament Conference. By September 
Stimson was so seriously concerned by the behavior of the 
German Government that on September 8, a day of ambassa- 
dorial calls on the Secretary, "when the German came in, I 
gave him the devil." The "old Prussian spirit" was abroad 
again, and the postwar period was ending in failure. Stimson's 
concession to France, like Herriot's concession to Germany, had 



2 8o ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

been too little and too late. If circumstance and national atti- 
tudes were more at fault than individuals, the failure neverthe- 
less remained. 

Stimson was not content, in 1947, to rest on his picture of a 
Greek tragedy, drawn in 1932. Greek tragedy is the tragedy 
of the inevitable, and the tragedy of the early 1 930*8 was to 
Stimson always rather a tragedy of foolish nations and inade- 
quate statesmen. The besetting sin of the nations was nation- 
alism ; that of the statesmen was timidity. The four critically 
important powers in the last great attempt to achieve disarma- 
ment and a true sense of peace were Germany, France, Great 
Britain, and the United States. Each of them had it in its 
power, single-handed, to break the log jam and insure success. 
Germany could have done it by accepting her inferiority in 
arms ; France could have done it by voluntarily reducing her 
land army; Great Britain could have done it by giving the 
French an unconditional guarantee of alliance against aggres- 
sion; the United States by a much smaller offer to France 
could have achieved the same result. Each of the four nations 
later took, voluntarily or involuntarily, exactly the course 
which in 1932 was inconceivable to each of them, and did so 
in circumstances vastly more unpleasant than those of 1932. 

But nationalism was a sentiment too deep-rooted for its 
unhappy aspects to be exorcised in a day, and Stimson never 
wondered that no nation stepped out boldly to cut by a single 
stroke the Gordian knot of disarmament. Such strokes are rare. 
What did seem to him disappointing was that he and his 
colleagues had been unable to perform the ordinary task of 
statesmanship; they had not found a way to untie the knot. 
What could have been done in one big stroke by one nation 
could also have been done in a large number of little steps, all 
four powers contributing in reasonable proportion. The goal 
of statesmanship in 1931 was stable peace. To reach that goal 
the statesmen were required to make some inroads on the terri- 
tory held by nationalism. But they were not without weapons ; 
the peoples who were so full of national pride were also full 
of a deep yearning for peace. Surely it was the function of 
statesmanship to show these peoples that peace depended in 
some part upon the doing of things that nationalism denounced. 



THE TRAGEDY OF TIMIDITY 281 

Surely it was the duty of the democratic leaders to fight and 
educate, and not to surrender to the simple formula of "polit- 
ical impossibility." 

Some of the responsible statesmen were as narrow as any oi 
their nations; some were embittered by real or fancied hurts 
from other lands. But taken together, especially when their 
expert advisers are included, they knew what should be done. 

Stimson could not avoid the conclusion that the tragedy of 
1932 in the politics of Europe was a tragedy not of Greek 
inevitability, nor even of the vast human error of national- 
istic pride. It was a tragedy of the timidity of statesmanship. 
He was prepared in 1947 to stand by an outburst recorded on 
November 30, 1932, in protest against financial troubles; it was 
an outburst of general applicability, and it fitted with par- 
ticular force the political failure in Europe: "I broke out 
and said that I was living in a world where all my troubles 
came from the same thing, not only in finance but in all matters, 
where we are constantly shut in by the timidity of governments 
making certain great decisions, for fear that some adminis- 
tration will be overthrown. ... I said that the time had come 
when somebody has got to show some guts." 



CHAPTER XI 

Out Again 



I. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1932 

FAR-REACHING political failure in Europe and un- 
blocked aggression in Asia might be the principal concerns 
of the American State Department in 1932, but for the Amer- 
ican people and most of the administration in Washington 
the important question of the year was the Presidential elec- 
tion. Gradually during the summer and autumn of the year 
Stimson himself was drawn into the campaign, until in Oc- 
tober and early November it was his absorbing task. It was 
not a pleasant campaign or an easy one ; from the beginning 
defeat was so clearly probable that it was uphill work all the 
way. 

The primary and overriding issue of the campaign, of 
course, was the depression. The Republicans could not escape 
from the fact that they had promised prosperity in 1928 and 
had instead held the Presidency through three years of deep- 
ening depression. As Stimson said in a campaign speech, "It 
is a natural trait of human nature in a democracy to visit upon 
its officials the responsibility for the consequences when mat- 
ters go wrong." This broad basic reaction against Mr. Hoover 
was inescapable. 

There was a further difficulty in the pernicious skill with 
which the Democratic National Committee had spent time 
and money to blacken the President's reputation. This cam- 
paign of defamation, continuous through Mr. Hoover's term, 
was as unscrupulous as it was clever; it was perhaps equaled 
only by the attacks made on Franklin Roosevelt by Repub- 
lican agents in later years. But unlike Mr. Roosevelt, President. 

283 



OUT AGAIN 283 

Hoover lacked zest for the manipulation of opinion. He was 
shy and sensitive personally; and he regarded his office with 
such respect that he considered political polemics improper. 
He worked at his job with an intensity and devotion unequaled 
in Stimson's experience, but he seemed unable to present him- 
self to the people as a confident, fighting, democratic leader. 
In the battle of opinion he was almost from the beginning 
placed on the defensive. 

Nor was his position made easier by the existence of a hos- 
tile Congress. The election of 1930 had put the opposition 
in control of both houses, and Mr. Hoover found himself the 
victim of what Stimson considered the most unfortunate single 
aspect of the American constitutional system. Like Mr. Taft 
and Mr. Wilson before him, he learned that failures resulting 
from an impasse between President and Congress are usually 
held against the President. 

And finally, Mr. Hoover was up against a candidate who 
had already demonstrated phenomenal power as a vote getter 
in two elections in New York and who was to prove himself, 
in four successive Presidential contests, the greatest campaigner 
in American political history. 

To Stimson the basic issue of the campaign was not the 
depression but the principles of President Hoover. He believed 
that the President had labored with great skill and energy to 
meet the depression with sound and constructive remedies, 
and that he had shown both courage and wisdom in resisting 
the "treasury raids" projected by Democratic leaders in Con- 
gress. He was in full agreement with Mr. Hoover's insistence 
that the leadership of the Federal Government must be used to 
reinforce and not to undermine the functions of state and local 
government. He fully agreed with the President's doctrine of 
a balanced budget, local relief, and sound money. He knew that 
Mr. Hoover had no intention whatever of permitting unneces- 
sary human suffering in the depression, but he shared his 
conviction that federal action to relieve this suffering must be 
a last and not a first resort. As he listened to the President's 
acceptance speech on August n, 1932, he was convinced that 
it was "a great state document." "The contrast between this 
tangible evidence, of a faithful President wfrp had worked tp^ 



284 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the limit for the people during this depression, on the one side, 
and the untried rather flippant young man who is trying to 
take his place, on the other, became so evident to me that it 
seemed as if really the American people and their power of 
choice were on trial rather than the two candidates." (Diary, 
August n, 1932) 

Since this was Stimson's feeling, he was naturally eager to 
give his full support to Mr. Hoover's campaign ; he had, how- 
ever, one reservation, which involved him in the unpleasant 
duty of seeming to disappoint the President in his time of 
greatest need. Stimson did not wish to attack the Democratic 
candidate ; he considered such partisan polemics improper in 
a Secretary of State, and he further believed that the proper 
strategy of Mr. Hoover's campaign was the positive assertion 
of achievement and purpose. It was, therefore, a "dreadful 
shock" when he was told by the President that "somebody from 
New York ought to make a speech attacking the Roosevelt 
administration and showing that he was a failure as an admin- 
istrator, and that I was the best one to do it. ... For two 
years I have been making up my mind as firmly as possible 
that I would not go into this campaign on an attacking basis, 
or one which would drag me into personalities. Two years ago 
... I was dragged into an attack on Roosevelt in the [guber- 
natorial] campaign, and I have regretted it ever since. I told 
all this to the President and frankly told him I wouldn't do 
it. I told him my metier was to make a constructive speech 
about him and not Roosevelt. ... It meant that I was turning 
down the first request he had made of me in regard to the cam- 
paign and it made me feel very badly." (Diary, September 6, 

J 93 2 ) 
The pressure for an attack on the Democratic candidate 

continued, however, and in the end Stimson felt it necessary 
to recede somewhat from his initial position. He refrained 
from any direct attack on Roosevelt, but he made speeches 
contrasting the two candidates in a manner very favorable 
to Mr. Hoover. Even this he thought a mistake, not because 
he did not prefer the President to his opponent, but because 
"to use the great office of Secretary of State to launch a purely 



OUT AGAIN 285 

personal attack on Roosevelt is quite inconsistent with my 
dignity and that of the office." 

What Stimson much preferred, and undertook with zest, was 
the task of presenting his personal picture of Mr. Hoover. He 
believed that the President, cooped up in the White House 
with his hundreds of pressing duties, had never been really 
understood by the people. So in his first major campaign 
speech Stimson's most powerful paragraphs were devoted to 
a description of the great qualities of his chief: 

"I cannot close without trying to give you at least an impres- 
sion of the personal character of his leadership. I have stood 
beside him for over three years and have witnessed it at short 
range. Mr. Hoover is no perfunctory leader. . . . His is a 
keen and ever-ready power of analysis, his a well-poised and 
balanced intelligence. Behind those qualities is the most un- 
ceasing mental energy with which I have ever come in con- 
tact. And again, behind that, although they are shy and never 
paraded in official discussions, lies the guidance of the human 
sympathies of one of the most sensitive and tender natures 
which has ever wielded such official power. . . . The foreign 
policy of the United States has received the constant benefit 
of his own wide experience in and knowledge of the affairs 
of other nations, as well as of the remarkable personal powers 
to which I have alluded. . . . m 

This was an estimate made in the heat of a campaign, but 
as a statement of Mr. Hoover's personal qualities Stimson in 
1947 thought it precise. It was one of the misfortunes of 
politics that those great qualities were not adequately under- 
stood and recognized by many Americans. "The campaign 
is no longer a campaign of principles. It is a campaign on the 
President's personality, and the only person who can speak 
effectively is the President. He has been suffering from the 
fact that he has stayed in Washington so long that the people 
have lost touch with him, and he has become a shadow. . . . 
I have said this to him again and again and again." (Diary 
October 4, 1932) When Mr. Hoover did at last take his case to 
the country in a series of fighting speeches, Stimson found 
their effect "magical," though probably "too late." 

1 Radio address from the Union League Club, Philadelphia, October i, 1932. 



286 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

While his estimate of Mr. Hoover's character seemed to him 
to stand up under the passage of time, Stimson could not say 
as much for some of his other campaign utterances. He was 
aware of the way in which a political -campaign engages the 
partisan enthusiasm of speechmakers, but he was nevertheless 
astonished 'and pained to find that in 1932 he had been able to 
make a vigorous defense of the Hawley-Smoot tariff and a 
strong attack on Democratic low-tariff policy. Loyalty to Mr, 
Hoover, combined with the campaigner's desire to make the 
best of everything, excused in his eyes a number of other argu- 
ments used in 1932, but to defend the tariff was going a bit far 
for one of his basic beliefs. He could not attack it, but he might 
properly have kept still. A man's campaign speeches,' he 
remarked when he looked back at 1932, 'are no proper subject 
for the study of a friendly biographer.' 

Except for the tariff, problems of foreign policy fortunately 
did not become important campaign issues. There was a short 
flurry among ardent politicians over the State Department's 
firmness in opposing the resurgent nationalism of Germany; 
the "German vote" was regarded as dangerous. But Stimson 
stood his ground and the President did not interfere. The 
war debts did not become, an urgent subject, though both 
parties took stands that seemed narrow and unrealistic to 
Stimson. Everyone was in favor of disarmament, and the ad- 
ministration's stand on Manchuria seemed to be accepted as a 
source of some political strength. The campaign was fought 
on domestic issues on Mr. Hoover's record and on prohibi- 
tion. 

This last topic was one which concerned Stimson as much 
as any on the political scene. Though he was a personal ab- 
stainer for most of his life, he did not believe in national pro- 
hibition. But he had rigorously obeyed the law during the dry 
years, and he thought that outright repeal of the Eighteenth 
Amendment was of itself no solution to the problem of liquor. 
To escape from the speak-easy in order to return to the saloon 
seemed to him not very helpful, and he therefore believed 
that the Federal Government as the only effective agency 
should retain the power of regulating the liquor trade. This 
position was essentially the same as that adopted by the Repub- 



OUT AGAIN 287 

lican party in an effort to satisfy both the drys and the wets, so 
Stimson was able to give his genuine support to a plank that 
many regarded as a flagrant straddle. He spoke in defense of 
the Republican position in a full-length address broadcast 
from Washington on October 29, and he continued to believe 
even after repeal that the last word in liquor control had not 
been spoken. Ideally the problem belonged to the several states, 
but in 1947 the situation on many state and county lines, wet on 
one side and dry on the other, seemed to demonstrate that un- 
regulated local option had its grave drawbacks. But the basic 
difficulty in the liquor problem, during and after prohibition, 
as Stimson saw it, was the difficulty of persuading Americans 
as a people to regulate by moderate and not by extreme con- 
trols. The fanatical drys and liquor excesses remained inex- 
tricably linked in many parts of the country. 

As the campaign progressed Stimson experienced the alter- 
nations of gloom and fleeting hopes which are the lot of party 
leaders in a losing contest. By the eve of election he was per- 
suaded that all was lost, and he was also persuaded that this 
was a most terrible prospect. Fie believed that the "people of 
sobriety and intelligence and responsibility" were on Mr. 
Hoover's side, but he knew that "the immense undercurrent 
is against us." And in his really unhappy moments, he was 
capable of such an outburst as this: "The people of the country 
are in a humor where they don't want to hear any reason. . . . 
They want a change, and I think they are going to get it, but 
if they do get it, in less than a year they will be the sickest 
country that ever walked the face of this earth or else I miss 
my guess." (Diary, September 22, 1932) 

On November 8, in a landslide which left Mr. Hoover the 
winner in only six states, the people of the United States got 
their change. And so did Stimson, for with the announcement 
of the verdict he threw aside his cares and fears like a worn- 
out mantle. The campaign had been disheartening, but it was 
over. There was no need for second-guessing on the Repub- 
lican effort, for "the result is so overwhelming that it removes 
all of the personal responsibility from it." As for the new 
administration which had seemed so dangerous, "the one prob- 
lem that comes up in my mind is the problem of co-operation 



288 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

for the future in order that the nation shall not lose by the 
transition." (Diary, November 8, '1932) 

2. MIDDLEMAN AFTER ELECTION 

Compared to the months before the election, the four months 
between the defeat of Mr. Hoover and the inauguration of Mr. 
Roosevelt were for Stimson lighthearted and easy. They were 
months full of complex and unpleasant problems, but at the 
end of them freedom beckoned, and Stimson was to find much 
satisfaction in the treatment he received from Republicans 
and Democrats alike during the interim period. 

The change in his mental attitude was recorded at length 
on November 9: 

"I had a good sleep and awoke the morning after the elec- 
tion feeling a greater sense of freedom than I have for four 
years. -In spite of another very rainy day, Woodley never 
seemed more attractive than it does this morning, on Wednes- 
day, November 9th. Of course my future is all up in the air, 
I don't know what I shall do. I have been out of my profession 
now for five years. I am sixty-five years old, and I don't feel 
very much like going back into the harness again to the life of 
drudgery that I had before. But I think I shall have to make 
some reconnection with my profession, because otherwise I 
shall be completely lost. The great problem is to find out how 
to do it, and at the same time keep open the chances for capi- 
talizing to the usefulness of the country the experience I have 
had for the last four years in this very responsible post. Of 
course my own party is now in opposition, or will be after the 
fourth of March, and the chances are that the situation will 
be very different from what it is now. But, fortunately, I have 
been in a post which has been the most nonpartisan post in the 
Cabinet and have just as many good friends among the Demo- 
crats as among the Republicans, and I trust no enemies ; and 
it may be possible to be useful in some now unforeseen way. At 
the same time I have taken an active part in the campaign and 
have made some vigorous speeches against Roosevelt, which 
cannot make him feel very friendly towards me. So that the 



OUT AGAIN 289 

result is that I am in the lap of the gods, and only the future 
will tell what we can do. 

"The first problem is to make sure that whoever comes in 
as Secretary of State after me shall have a fair chance to under- 
stand the policies we have been working out during this time, 
and, as far as possible, not do something to reverse them un- 
necessarily. That is what we will have to do this winter in 
trying to smooth out the difficulties." 

The first efforts of co-operation with the President-elect 
were not encouraging. The war debts, necessarily shelved dur- 
ing the campaign, returned at once to make trouble, not only 
between Stimson and Mr. Hoover, as we have seen, but between 
the President and the President-elect, and this latter difficulty 
seemed to involve real personal animus on both sides. Mr. 
Hoover asked for Mr. Roosevelt's help in developing a policy 
which would reach fruition only after the inauguration; Mr. 
Roosevelt argued that he could not intervene in the question, 
since all authority and responsibility rested with the men actu- 
ally holding office. In this case Stimson believed that Mr. 
Hoover's stand was a good deal better than his antagonist's, 
but he also believed that neither of the two men was at his 
best in dealing with the other. This mutual distrust was to per- 
sist for twelve years more, and after 1940, when he had come 
to feel the same loyalty and affection toward Franklin Roose- 
velt that he had for Herbert Hoover, Stimson many times 
regretted it; it seemed absurd that an ancient grudge should 
keep a man of the stature of Mr. Hoover on the side lines at 
a time when the country needed every able public servant it 
could get. 

The war debt negotiations between Mr. Hoover and Mr. 
Roosevelt reached an apparent impasse on December 21. On 
December 22 Stimson received a telephone message from his 
friend Professor Felix Frankfurter. "Frankfurter called me 
up from Albany. He was at the Executive Mansion spending 
the night with Roosevelt. He said that in the middle of their 
conversation, which lasted about two hours, Roosevelt sud- 
denly out of a clear sky said, Why doesn't Harry Stimson come 
up here and talk with me and settle this damn thing that 
nobody else seems to be able to?' And on that basis Frankfurter-- 



290 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

called me up. He said that if I would call up Roosevelt and 
ask him if something couldn't be done, he would invite me up 
there the day after Christmas to spend the night and we could 
talk it over. Frankfurter and I had quite a long talk over the 
telephone. He thinks that there has been a terrible misunder- 
standing. He said that Roosevelt feels very badly that all co- 
operative efforts had been broken off. I told him that that was 
the way we felt down here and that we had gotten the impres- 
sion that Roosevelt had his own plans and didn't want any co- 
operation. Altogether it was a funny occurrence. I told Frank- 
furter that I would think it over. He is to be in New York 
tomorrow, and I told him I would telephone him there. Frank- 
furter told me that Roosevelt apparently had no acrimony 
against me at all even on the subject of my 1930 speech, which 
Frankfurter had specifically asked about, and Frankfurter told 
me that he had used the same words about me that had been 
reported to me by some of the newspapermen, namely, that I 
didn't play politics." 

On the following day Stimson reported this message to the 
President. "He was against it I could see from the first. He 
asked me to tell Mills about it, and then Mills was to come in 
and talk with him about it, which we did. He by that time was 
crystallized very strongly against going near Roosevelt. He 
said that the only way that he would reopen the gate was to 
have Roosevelt send down two or three people of proper 
eminence to talk with Mills and myself. . . . He was much 
influenced by the fact that every time he had had any personal 
interviews with Roosevelt, there has been unfavorable propa- 
ganda evidently coming from Roosevelt through the press 
afterwards. Mills coincided with his views. I did not press the 
invitation at all. I simply told them the facts, because I was in 
a position where I could not press it, but I made very clear 
what I thought of Frankfurter and his personal devotion to me, 
and Mills coincided in my good opinion of Frankfurter." 

So Stimson called Frankfurter and "told him that I could 
not meet Roosevelt. I told him that I was much gratified that 
Roosevelt wanted to meet me and had such a pleasant opinion 
of me but that I could not see at present that it would do any 
good. We had quite a long talk together. Frankfurter said that 



OUT AGAIN 291 

he hoped that it would not prevent a meeting later. I said no, 
that I hoped that might be open, but at present it was shut off." 

But a channel of communication was now open. On the 
twenty-third, even before he called Frankfurter, Stimson had 
received a four-point message from Mr. Roosevelt by way 
of Frankfurter and Herbert Feis. The messages related to 
minor matters, but they were friendly and co-operative in tone. 

On the twenty-fourth Frankfurter called again "with a new 
message from Roosevelt" The President-elect hoped that 
Stimson would be able to see him in New York in the first two 
weeks of January. If that was impossible he would stop over 
in Washington for twenty-four hours to see Stimson, on his 
way to Warm Springs. "It is renewed evidence on his part of 
a strong desire to see me, which puts up the responsibility to 
me very strongly for my answer. I feel very strongly that I 
should grant the request and so does Rogers and everybody else 
I have talked with. I told him I could not do so until the 
President gets back. When he does, I hope he will be more 
cheerful and rested than he was on Friday; and I shall then 
put it up to him very strongly, for it is to me incomprehen- 
sible that we should take a position which would deprive the 
incoming President of the United States of important informa- 
tion about foreign affairs, which he wishes apparently to get 
from me. ... I can see countless matters in which it will be 
important for me to have an interview with him in regard to 
such matters as Manchuria, the conferences and situations in 
Europe, about which I personally know so much and he so 
little, that I think it is most important for the United States 
and her foreign policy during the next four years that we 
should give this man as fair a chance as possible. It would be 
the very narrowest and worst position in the world to take to 
try to prevent his getting such information in order to preserve 
the tactical position which we have obtained from his mistake 
hitherto in the way in which he has sought these conferences." 
(Diary, December 24, 1932) 

Mr. Hoover did not return to Washington until after the 
New Year. Meanwhile Frankfurter came down to the State 
Department and gave Stimson his view of Mr. Roosevelt. "It 
was a much more attractive picture than we have been getting 



292 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

from the other side," and it reinforced Stimson in his desire to 
meet Mr. Roosevelt's request. 

On January 3 Stimson had a long talk with Mr. Hoover. 
"I told him that when a man in America, who had been elected 
the President of the United States, was going to have the wel- 
fare of our country in his hands for four years, if he lived, 
wanted to gain information about his job, and particularly 
our foreign relations, it was a very ticklish responsibility to 
refuse to give it to him. I said even supposing he was as bad as 
Hoover thought he was it was more dangerous to give him this 
grievance, I thought, than anything he could do in the way of 
treachery. In the beginning I told Hoover that I was suffi- 
ciently interested in his (Hoover's) policy to want to do any- 
thing I could to perpetuate it, and I was sufficiently interested, 
as he was, in the welfare of the country to do my best to try 
and make the next administration a success in recovery, if 
possible. The President thought possibly I might have some 
influence on him and he agreed to think it over." 

And the next day the President "finally yielded and said that 
he was willing to have me go up there, provided that Roose- 
velt would ask him first. He is very doubtful about the possi- 
bility of success, but he was willing to have me try it. I told 
him of course I would not think of going up without him, 
the President, being consulted and asked. I don't want any- 
thing to be done which would seem to be putting him to one 
side. I told this to Frankfurter and he thought that he could 
handle it all right with Roosevelt." Mr. Roosevelt quickly 
agreed to send the necessary letter to the President and so, at 
long last, it was agreed that Stimson should go and see the 
President-elect. It would be his first meeting with Franklin 
Roosevelt. 

On Monday, January 9, Stimson went to Hyde Park and 
talked for six hours with Mr. Roosevelt, "there being no others 
present at any time." "The Governor did everything he could 
to make the interview pleasant, and his hospitality was very 
agreeable. . . . We both spoke with the utmost freedom and 
informality." The two men talked about every major aspect of 
current foreign policy, and on balance Stimson found that they 
were in very substantial agreement, although Mr. Roosevelt 



OUT AGAIN 293 

seemed rather to underestimate the difficulties involved in 
disarmament, war debts, and the coming world economic con- 
ference. The most important point to Stimson was Mr. Roose- 
velt's quick understanding and general approval of his Man- 
churian policy. Stimson warned him that the League was 
approaching a final judgment and that the outgoing adminis- 
tration might have to make a further statement; Mr. Roosevelt 
promptly agreed and promised that he would do nothing to 
weaken Stimson's stand. The following week the President- 
elect went even farther in a public statement in support of the 
administration's Far Eastern policy. "It was a very good and 
timely statement and made me feel better than I have for a 
long time." (Diary, January 17, 1933) In a second meeting in 
Washington on January 19 Mr. Roosevelt remarked "that 'We 
are getting so that we do pretty good teamwork, don't we?' I 
laughed and said 'Yes.' " 

And the new relationship between Mr. Roosevelt and Stim- 
son opened the way to new discussions of the problem of war 
debts. Stimson now found himself acting as Mr. Hoover's 
liaison officer with Mr. Roosevelt. It proved possible to bring 
Mr. Hoover and Mr. Roosevelt together again at the White 
House and an agreement was reached on the procedure to be 
followed in opening discussions with the British. The discus- 
sion showed Mr. Roosevelt's continued belief in his own 
powers of personal negotiation and Stimson once more felt that 
the outgoing administration had far more understanding of the 
problem than Mr. Roosevelt and his leading adviser, Moley. 
But at least a joint press communique was agreed on, and Stim- 
son was also authorized to open the way for Mr. Roosevelt's 
personal discussion with the British. From the day of this 
meeting the initiative passed to the man who alone could carry 
it through, and Stimson confined himself to the dual task of 
facilitating Mr. Roosevelt's discussion with Sir Ronald Lind- 
say and conducting necessary State Department action on the 
debts in such a way as not to embarrass the incoming President. 
This was a ticklish task, for Mr. Hoover was preoccupied with 
the task of defending and reinforcing his own record on debts, 
and the defense of one policy was not easy to reconcile with the 
beginning of a somewhat different one. 



294 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Through the remainder of January and well into February 
Stimson was in touch with Mr. Roosevelt as occasion de- 
manded. The President-elect was punctilious in securing State 
Department approval before he undertook any meetings with 
foreign diplomats. Meanwhile Stimson began to wonder when 
Mr. Roosevelt would get around to choosing his successor so 
that detailed arrangements could be made for a smooth transi- 
tion. In a telephone talk on February 3 he pressed this question 
with Mr. Roosevelt, urging that without prompt announce- 
ment of "the people that we should deal with" it would be hard 
to get things straight before March 4, and that it would be 
asking a good deal to expect the outgoing officials to stay very 
long after that date. Mr. Roosevelt saw the point, but on Febru- 
ary 20 he still had not announced his choice of a Secretary of 
State, although rumors were becoming active and accurate, as 
Stimson pointed out in a conversation with Mr. Roosevelt on 
that day; "I then told him that everybody else seemed to know 
that Hull had been appointed Secretary of State except my- 
self." The President-elect said that Hull was indeed his choice, 
and two days later the appointment was announced. 

The day Cordell Hull's appointment was announced Stim- 
son wrote him a letter of congratulation and received a most 
cordial reply. Three days later Senator Hull came to the De- 
partment and the two men had the first of a regular series of 
increasingly friendly meetings which lasted without any break 
in mutual regard for the next twelve years, until age and health 
separated them. Stimson was at first a little fearful that Hull 
might be too gentle and slow to be master in his own house 
under a President who clearly intended to keep a personal eye 
on foreign affairs. This was an opinion which he thoroughly 
revised in later years. Hull had his troubles with President 
Roosevelt as which of those who worked for that extraor- 
dinary man did not? but Stimson knew him and honored him 
as a distinguished Secretary of State in a time far more difficult 
than even the trying years of 1931 and 1932. 

In this first talk and others extending through March 8, 
Stimson and Hull discussed at length all the current problems 
of the State Department. On no point was there important 
disagreement, and Stimson was particularly pleased by his 



OUT AGAIN 295 

successor's evident approval of his Far Eastern policy and his 
clear intention to support and advance the career officers of 
the Department. 

Thus the big job which Stimson had seen ahead on Novem- 
ber 9 seemed fairly well in hand as March 4 approached. And 
he had established friendly personal relations with the two 
men who would now be primarily responsible for American 
foreign affairs. It was a good ending. 

In other ways, too, his term was ending well. The press 
and the public seemed to feel more kindly toward him now 
than at any time before; the reporters in Washington who had 
found him chilly and unhelpful in 1929 and 1930 now seemed 
to feel that he was a fairly decent fellow, and their warmth was 
the more gratifying because it was unaccustomed. Within the 
State Department Stimson felt that he was leaving not just 
faithful assistants but a number of personal friends, and among 
his chief associates, the men who would be leaving office with 
him, he had added, in Rogers and Bundy, two new and dear 
friends. It was quite without any regret, and with a real sense 
of satisfaction, therefore, that he made ready for his exit. 

It was only as he considered the approaching change in the 
White House that he felt nervous. He had now met Mr. Roose- 
velt and found him both quick and friendly; he believed 
further that foreign affairs were safe in his hands. But it was 
not so clear that all would go well in domestic matters. Mr. 
Roosevelt had some strange advisers, and his way of doing 
business had already struck Stimson as "slapdash." Nor had 
his co-operation in foreign affairs been matched in the far 
more urgent and dangerous matter of the banking crisis. Stim- 
son heard that some of Mr. Roosevelt's friends were deliber- 
ately planning to let the crisis become even more acute until 
after the inauguration. 

As he looked from Franklin Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover 
in March, 1933, therefore, Stimson found himself unhappy 
over the approaching change. He was also sorry to see his 
relationship with Mr. Hoover coming to an end. He had had 
serious differences with the President, but never any reason to 
regret his service under a man whose burden had been much 
greater than his own. On March 2 Stimson stopped at the 



296 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

White House to have "a word or two of good-by," knowing 
that he would probably not have the chance in the last crowded 
hours. He told Mr. Hoover, "I was getting the jitters whenever 
I thought of how I should feel when I saw the last of him dis- 
appearing out of sight on his way to California. ... I told 
him that I hoped that, in spite of the fact that we had scrapped 
a good deal on some points, he did not feel that I did not thor- 
oughly trust him and have confidence in him. He smiled and 
said that he had been a pretty hard man to deal with these last 
two years ; that he had the jitters himself. We had a nice, frank, 
confidential talk. I came away feeling as I always do when I 
have such a talk with him." 

On Inauguration Day Stimson went through the usual 
ceremonies. By afternoon he was out of office and a free man. 
In the evening he and Mrs. Stimson went out to dinner with 
their closest State Department friends and associates in a fare- 
well party, and "we had really the best time we have had in 
Washington. . . . After dinner we talked a little about the 
crisis but not very long and then when the ladies came down 
we gathered around the piano and had singing until after mid- 
night . . . the spirit was perfectly lovely and we enjoyed it 
more than anything that had happened to us here." 



CHAPTER XII 

Toward General War 



I. CITIZEN AND OBSERVER 

IN STIMSON'S private life the years from 1933 to 1940 
were uneventful. During the first two years after leaving 
the State Department he returned to his law office in New York 
but continued to spend part of the winters in Washington at 
Woodley. Generally speaking, it was a period at first of rest 
and then of resumed private labor. The first year was not 
strenuous. In 1935 and 1936 he was occupied in the prepara- 
tion of The Far Eastern Crisis. In 1937 he was elected to serve 
for two years as president of the New York Bar Association. 
From 1938 until he was called back to Washington in 1940 
he was occupied with the largest single law case of his career. 
Almost every summer he and Mrs. Stimson went to Scotland, 
passing through England on their way and thus keeping closely 
in touch with the current of English opinion, This current was 
somewhat discouraging, but Stimson persisted in his deep con- 
viction that Great Britain and the United States must recon- 
struct the understanding which had been damaged first by the 
Manchurian affair and second by the war debt question. 

During the years that he spent in Washington, Stimson was 
several times a visitor at the White House. He later became 
a strong opponent of the New Deal, but in the earlier years 
he found Mr. Roosevelt always willing to hear his views and 
criticisms in friendly fashion. 

Stimson found Mr. Roosevelt's basic view of foreign affairs 
the same as his own. He approved of the President's recogni- 
tion of Russia and of his policy of building up the fleet; he 
felt that both were useful complements to the continued firm- 

297 



298 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ness of the American stand in the Far East. He found that 
Mr. Roosevelt was sympathetic to his views on the Philippines. 
If the President perhaps did not share Stimson's special en- 
thusiasm for a development toward dominion government, he 
was nevertheless clearly opposed to any irresponsible and 
faithless abandonment of the Islands, and his weight was 
always thrown against the effort to strangle Philippine trade 
with the United States. 

With Secretary Hull, Stimson also had regular meetings. 
He found himself unexpectedly drawn in as a friend and 
counselor to the new Secretary in the summer of 1933 at the 
London Economic Conference. When Stimson arrived in 
London on vacation, this meeting had just been severely af- 
fected by one of Mr. Roosevelt's sudden and casual shifts in 
attitude. Both the tone of his notorious message of July 3 
and the operations of his personal diplomat Raymond Moley 
served to make Secretary Hull's task vastly more difficult. 
The atmosphere of diplomatic London was sizzling when 
Stimson arrived, and it was with some difficulty that he held 
aloof from the charges and countercharges that were privately 
circulated by very high personages in Great Britain after this 
affair. 

Early in 1934 Stimson had his chance to strike a blow for 
Hull's dearest policy, and at the same time to give support to 
a principle which was important to him. For over forty years, 
since the time in 1892 when he voted for Grover Cleveland, 
Stimson had been at heart a low-tariff man. His views were by 
no means radical ; he believed that to a certain degree tariff 
protection was probably a necessary adjunct to the high stand- 
ard of American living. At the same time he was convinced 
that by the exigencies of congressional tariff making the Amer- 
ican tariff had become a hodgepodge of excessive rates designed 
mainly to protect inefficient and wholly uneconomic industries. 
And after his experiences in the State Department he was, 
emotionally, a stern enemy of the whole concept of economic 
isolation which lay behind the pressure for higher tariffs. 
Granting that free trade in the classical sense was no longer 
possible in an era of managed currency, government controls, 
and rigid economies, he nevertheless believed that for the 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 299 

United States, a creditor nation, greater imports were an im- 
perative necessity. Whatever might have been the earlier wis- 
dom of high tariffs, and whatever might be right for other 
nations, the American tariff must now come down. In the year 
after leaving the State Department Stimson had occasion to 
give close attention to the tariff problem. He was particularly 
impressed by a little book from the pen of Henry Wallace 
called America Must Choose in which the Secretary of Agri- 
culture argued with force and clarity for lower tariffs to permit 
greater agricultural exports. So in April, 1934, when the first 
Reciprocal Trade Agreement Bill was before the Senate, Stim- 
son was eager to help, and on receiving Hull's assurance that 
his support was welcome, he made a radio speech strongly 
supporting this Democratic measure. 

The main argument of this speech was simply for increased 
foreign trade. Stimson drew on Wallace's book for his con- 
tention that without a healthy foreign trade the United States 
must slip toward a controlled economy. "Mr. Wallace frankly 
points out the dangers and difficulties which will lie before us 
if we adopt the former course the compulsory government 
control of production and marketing . . . ; the suppression of 
our hereditary initiative and love of freedom; and, worst of 
all, the stifling of individual free thought and speech which 
is a necessary accompaniment of the process if we carry 
national planning to its full conclusion. I am very glad that he 
frankly announces his own distaste and opposition to such a 
process and that he evidently believes that we should try as 
far as possible to follow the other course that of trying to 
restore our international trade." 1 

The speech continued with a description of the increasing 
restrictions placed on foreign trade by foreign nations and 
then took a course directly in line with Stimson's whole phi- 
losophy of government : The power to meet the situation must 
be given to the Executive. The proposed bill would in effect 
give to the President authority to make limited changes in the 
American tariff. "I think that some such legislation should be 
promptly passed to meet the emergency which confronts us. 

1 Radio address, April 39, 1934. 



3 oo ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

I am not impressed with the objection that it would give 
undue or dictatorial powers to our Executive." 

Carefully hedged as it was, this speech was not in its direct 
statement a low-tariff document. In its political effect, how- 
ever, it was exactly that, as the reaction of its audience demon- 
strated. Stimson was surprised and pleased with its recep- 
tion, which was friendly in all quarters but one. "I took a little 
care of the publicity and it went off with a pretty good bang. 
The Times and Tribune [of New York] printed it in full 
and it obtained great publicity all over the country. The 
Republicans on the whole were very angry of course for it 
contravened their rather stupid policy of indiscriminate op- 
position. This was a time when an opportunity was presented 
to assist the policy of the conservative advisers of the President 
and to oppose that of the radicals, and I felt that it was very 
important to take it. ... I received a great many letters of 
commendation and almost no public criticism. ... Of course 
Hull and the members of the Department were thoroughly 
delighted and Hull again and again thanked me for it. The 
President himself told me that he thought I was the chief 
influence in securing the probable passage of the bill." (Diary, 
May 1 8, 1934) Mr. Roosevelt was not a man who ever sacri- 
ficed his , friendly feelings to strict accuracy, and Stimson 
never believed himself the father, or even the midwife, of the 
Trade Agreements Act. But he was always glad that he had 
done what he could to help. 

Through the succeeding years he became more and more 
convinced that the path on which Cordell Hull set out in 1934 
was the only one which gave any promise of a stable foreign 
commerce in a prosperous America ; tariff reduction, with or 
without equivalent concessions from other nations, was the 
only sensible course for the United States. 

In 1936 the Republican insistence on a high tariff so dis- 
gusted him that in spite of his growing disapproval of the New 
Deal he took no active part whatever in the campaign. In 1947, 
when the Republicans in Congress once more demonstrated 
their continued subservience to the selfish pressure groups 
which produce tariff barriers, he was more angry still, for the 
Second World War and its aftermath had made the economic 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 301 

impossibility and blind folly of such a program more evident 
than ever. He did not know when his party and many Demo- 
crats too would understand that America must learn to like 
heavy imports, but he was certain that the longer their igno- 
rance continued, the more painful the resulting lesson 
would be. 

Whatever else it did, Stimson's advocacy of the Trade 
Agreements Act endeared him to Mr. Roosevelt. A few weeks 
after making his speech he was called to the White House for 
lunch, and he had a talk with the President which lasted an 
hour and a half and was the friendliest he had ever had. It 
was at this meeting that he discovered how closely Mr. Roose- 
velt's view of Japan coincided with his own, and he heard 
from the President an extraordinary but impressive tale of 
the long-term ambitions of the Japanese as they had been ex- 
plained to young Franklin Roosevelt'by a Japanese friend at 
Harvard in 1902. "This young Japanese boy had told him of 
the making in 1889 of the one-hundred-year Japanese plan 
for the Japanese dynasty, which involved the following steps 
in the following order : 

"i. An official war with China to show that they could 
fight and could beat China. 

"2. The absorption of Korea. 

"3. A defensive war against Russia. 

"4. The taking of Manchuria. 

"5. Taking of Jehol. 

"6. The establishment of a virtual protectorate over north- 
ern China from the Wall to the Yangtze. 

"7. Encircling movement in Mongolia and the establish- 
ment of the Japanese influence through instructors as far as 
Tibet, thus establishing a precautionary threat against Russia 
on one side and India on the other. 

"8. The acquisition of all the islands of the Pacific including 
Hawaii. 

"9. Eventually the acquisition of Australia and New Zea- 
land. 

"10. Establishment of Japanese (using a word indicating 
a rather fatherly control, which the President said he could 
not quite remember) over all of the yellow races, including 



302 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the Malays. In this way the young man said they would have 
a definite point of threat against Europe. 

"When young Roosevelt asked him what they were going to 
do to the United States, he said that the United States need 
not have any fear; that all they would do in the new hemi- 
sphere would be to establish outposts, one probably in Mexico 
and another perhaps in Peru ; otherwise they would leave us 
alone. But we must remember that they were a temperate zone 
people and they must have Australia and New Zealand to 
expand in. The President commented in how many particulars 
this plan revealed to him by the young Jap, who was a high- 
class member of the Samurai caste in Japan, had been con- 
firmed by subsequent events this having been told to Roose- 
velt several years before the Russo-Japanese War." (Diary, 
May 17, 1934) Nothing that happened in the next seven years 
weakened the aptness of this strange and well-remembered 
conversation in Cambridge. 

This talk with Mr. Roosevelt covered many phases of Amer- 
ican policy, foreign and domestic; its entire tone was symbol- 
ized in a couple of sentences of mutually satisfactory reminis- 
cence: "I reminded him that his magnanimity towards me 
had enabled us to work out this working relation which we 
had and, to explain what I meant, I recalled that I had treated 
him pretty roughly in 1930. He laughed and said, 'Yes, and I 
made an utterly unfair answer to you.' He met me fully in the 
spirit in which I was speaking and said that he felt that my 
action with him in January, 1933, had helped stave over a very 
difficult situation." (Diary, May 17, 1934) 

Stimson and Mr. Roosevelt had one further talk later in 
1934; after that they did not meet again until 1940, although 
they exchanged several letters. For this there were a number 
of reasons. One was that this later talk produced a misunder- 
standing, minor in itself, which for a time clouded Stimson's 
confidence in the President. Another, probably more important, 
was Stimson's growing absorption in his New York practice. 
A third was his increasing opposition to the trend of the New 
Deal. A fourth was that after 1934, bowing to the overwhelm- 
ing opinion of his countrymen, Mr. Roosevelt for some years 
pursued a policy in foreign affairs which seemed to Stimson 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 303 

not sufficiently positive or active. But throughout this period 
Stimson never forgot that Franklin Roosevelt was a man he 
knew and liked, and not a bogey, and Mr. Roosevelt for his 
part sent regular messages of personal cordiality and friend- 
ship. 

Opposition to the New Deal came naturally to Stimson. He 
had been a progressive in 1911, but by 1935 he was clearly a 
conservative, at least in the terms of the i93o's. He was not a 
New Deal hater ; he recognized that much of the New Deal 
program and more of its motives were admirable. But he was 
against TVA as government in business; he was against the 
heavily unbalanced budgets as dangerous to the government's 
financial stability; he strongly deprecated Mr. Roosevelt's 
appeals to class feeling; he believed that the Wagner Act 
was a wholly unbalanced and unfair piece of legislation. 

But the one undertaking of the New Deal which aroused 
him to open and immediate opposition was the Supreme Court 
Bill of 1937. This he denounced early and vigorously, and he 
actively participated in the effort which defeated it. In 1935 
when the NRA was invalidated and Mr. Roosevelt made his 
famous remark about the Court and the horse-and-buggy age, 
Stimson had written him a long and careful letter combining 
sympathy with a warning against any head-on attack on the 
Court. He had received in return a most friendly answer, in 
which Mr. Roosevelt said that the truth was probably halfway 
between them. The administration's effort in 1937, however, 
was neither temperate nor intelligent, and in Stimson's view 
it was a direct assault on the Constitution. He believed that 
Mr. Roosevelt had no real or justifiable grievance against the 
Court; he was absolutely certain that the President's way of 
seeking redress was wholly wrong. His attitude is perhaps best 
expressed not in his public statements but in a diary entry of a 
conversation with Hull, whom he continued throughout the 
period to see at regular intervals : "Bef ore I left I told him very 
frankly of my shock at the President's Supreme Court pro- 
posal. I reminded him that I had supported his work through- 
out even at the cost of differing from my party and that I had 
also tried to assist the President when he had asked me in 
foreign affairs, to all of which Mr. Hull assented. When I 



304 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

said, 'But I cannot tell you how shocked I have been at recent 
events,' a look of pain came over his face; he raised his hands 
in deprecation and said, 'I understand, I understand. You mean 
the Supreme Court and the sitdown strikes.' I said I didn't 
feel so shocked at the sitdown strikes for that may be for all 
I know a difficult and involved matter for the government to 
handle and I realize that it must be difficult, but the other is 
a straight plain constitutional issue. I said, 'I ijever expected 
to live to see a President of the United States try to pack the 
Supreme Court.' I went on : 'Furthermore in this position at 
the beginning of the depression I watched many dictatorships 
come and the steps by which they came. I do not think that the 
President has any intention of making himself a dictator but 
I can only say that anyone who had such an intention would 
follow exactly this course.' " (Diary, April 7, 1937) 

This was the high point of Stimson's opposition to the 
Roosevelt administration. In 1938 he argued strongly for 
changes in the Wagner Act; this led to his first campaign 
activity since 1932 he supported his old friend John Lord 
O'Brian against his old acquaintance Robert Wagner. In 1939, 
when the administration had begun to catch up with him in 
foreign policy, he combined his support of Mr. Roosevelt's 
firm stand against isolationism with a comment which accu- 
rately summarizes his general view of the New Deal : 

"National strength is not promoted by an extravagance 
which comes dangerously near the impairment of our national 
credit. It is not promoted by discouraging the business welfare 
of the country upon which depends the economic power of the 
nation. It is not promoted by novel and haphazard experiments 
with the nation's finance. National unity is not promoted by 
appeals to class spirit. Nor is it promoted by methods which 
tend to disrupt the patriotism of either party or the effective 
co-operation of the two, upon which the co-ordi'nate working 
of the American Government depends." 2 

But the tariff, the New Deal, the law, and even the delights 
of private life were all secondary, in these seven years, to 
Stimson's constant and intense concern with international 
political affairs. This was the subject on which he wrote and 

2 Letter to the New York Times, March 6, 1939. 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 305 

spoke most often, the subject on which he constantly sought 
expert opinion, the subject on which he was most disturbed 
about the attitude of his countrymen, and, in the end, the sub- 
ject whose unrolling course returned him to public life. 

2 - I 933- I 94 CAST AS CASSANDRA 

The Second World War casts a long shadow backward over 
the history of the years before its outbreak, and in writing of 
Stimson's service as Secretary of State from the vantage point 
of 1947 it has seemed proper to focus attention on those events 
and actions which now appear as natural forerunners of war. 
In any retrospective view it is clear that two of the great turn- 
ing points of the years between wars were the invasion of Man- 
churia by Japan and the accession of Adolf Hitler. Stimson's 
connection with both these events has been described, and the 
description has been set in the dark colors appropriate to the 
occasion. The failure was evident at the time, and profoundly 
depressing. 

What was not evident and this point must here be empha- 
sized was the degree and extent of the failure. There was no 
sense of general frustration in Stimson's mind as he left the 
State Department and no certain foreboding of inevitable war. 
He had no foreknowledge of the series of additional errors and 
failures which were to bring not merely war but imminent 
danger of the overthrow of Western civilization. Nor did he 
at first fully appreciate the diabolical intensity of the forces set 
free in the new Germany and the new Japan. 

It thus happened that in writing of his experience as Secre- 
tary of State, and trying to assess the future, between 1933 and 
1936, Stimson permitted himself a cautious optimism which 
was not borne out by events. Both the optimism and the unful- 
filled conditions on which it was based deserve attention. 

The central effort of Stimson's service as Secretary of State 
had been to break down the barriers to American co-operation 
with the rest of the world. "I believe," he wrote in his last 
weeks in office, "that important foundations of progress have 
been laid, upon which it will be possible for an enduring struc- 



306 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ture to be erected by the labors of our successors." 3 His political 
co-operation with the League, his principle of consultation in 
the face of a breach of the peace, his earnest effort to mobilize 
and enforce the sanction of public opinion, feeble though they 
might seem in contemplation of the great world war which 
followed, did not seem weak to him, and he was sure that they 
represented a step in the right direction. 

Similarly he believed and repeatedly argued that the League 
of Nations had been astonishingly successful in view of the 
difficulties it had faced. Granted that it had not guaranteed 
peace, it was at least an agency with the proper machinery for 
such a guarantee, and it had provided the enduring forum and 
meeting ground the absence of which Sir Edward Grey had 
considered a primary cause of war in 1914. Granted that it had 
not applied against Japan the machinery of economic sanctions 
with which it was provided, it was at least promoting "to a 
high degree" the "growth and organization of an intelligent 
public opinion of the world," which was clearly the "first step 
in developing the machinery of war prevention." Writing in 
1934 Stimson argued that "lack of sympathy and cynicism of 
attitude" toward such efforts would be inexcusable. And the 
lectures from which those quotations are taken were frankly 
designed to "offset the pessimism, not to say panic, which we 
have so commonly expressed as to recent occurrences in Cen- 
tral Europe." 4 

For Stimson greatly underestimated the Nazis during their 
first three years in power. He did not believe that Hitler would 
last after the purge of June 30, 1934, he expressed the view 
that "Nazism in Germany was on the toboggan" (Diary, July 
24, 1934) and throughout this period he was convinced that 
economics forbade the persistence of a rearming dictatorship, 
sharing the view so widely held that Germany's dependence 
for economic well-being on other nations "offers a fairly safe 
guarantee against unrestrained violence against her neighbors 
on the part of Germany." 5 

A somewhat similar hopefulness characterized Stimson's 

3 Foreign Affairs, April, 1933. 

4 Democracy and Nationalism, Stafford Little Lectures at Princeton University, Prince- 
ton, 1934. 

^Democracy and Nationalism, p. 42. 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 307 

thinking about Japan in this period. Although Manchuria was 
still occupied, and Japanese tentacles were already reaching 
out toward other parts of China, he did not believe that either 
Japan or Germany was wholly lost to liberalism and continued 
to hope that the passage of time and the continuing pressure of 
world opinion would bring reversals of the trend in both 
countries. 

These, then, were Stimson's hopes in the first years after his 
service as Secretary of State. To some degree, it seems clear, 
they were based on a serious misreading of the strength and 
menace of modern militaristic dictatorship. But in far greater 
measure Stimson's error in foresight was due to his failure to 
anticipate the extraordinary weakness and cowardice which 
were to be displayed by all the nonaggressive nations, his own 
included, in dealing with the rise of aggressive states. When he 
foretold the speedy collapse of Hitlerism, it did not occur to 
him that Western statesmen would actively connive at the 
penetration and destruction of one nation after another, and 
when he hoped for a victory of moderation in Japan, he did not 
anticipate that his own countrymen would for three years assist 
in nourishing the Japanese war machine. As these failures be- 
came apparent, and particularly as it became clear that the 
American people were shifting their course toward an isola- 
tionism more binding and complete than ever before, Stim- 
son ceased to be a cautious optimist and assumed instead the 
unhappy and temperamentally ill-fitting role of Cassandra. 

The five years of Anglo-French folly which preceded the 
outbreak of war in September, 1939, need not here be dis- 
cussed. Stimson watched the course of events, from the betrayal 
of Ethiopia through the absurd "nonintervention" in Spain, 
on to the final moral abdication at Munich, in mounting appre- 
hension and dismay, but he spoke no word of these views in 
public; he agreed with a friend in October, 1938, u in feeling 
(as Americans whose country would not help out in the situa- 
tion) a great disinclination to criticize those who had the 
responsibility." (Diary, October 24, 1938) His public state- 
ments and personal efforts were directed toward his own coun- 
trymen, in an effort first to stem and then to reverse a rising tide 
of isolationism. This he undertook in a series of speeches and 



308 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

statements beginning in 1935, in which he steadily developed 
his basic assertion that the nation could not successfully or 
peacefully set the pursuit of peace ahead of the pursuit of 
righteousness. In these speeches and statements was Stimson's 
stand against the danger he had warned of even in his deliber- 
ately optimistic assessment of April, 1934, in the last para- 
graph of the last lecture: "The United States is in its ultimate 
resources the world's most powerful nation today. It is the 
nation most safely protected from outside aggression by its 
geographical position. Its people have taken historic pride in 
their championships of peace and justice. We are the people, 
therefore, who can most easily and safely give sympathy, 
encouragement and help to the world in its vital struggle to 
protect our common civilization against war. On the other 
hand, should we refuse to assume even that measure of respon- 
sibility, should we insist upon our government retiring into 
isolation and turning its back upon all efforts for peace in other 
portions of the world, we must face the fact that the peace 
machinery will be infinitely weakened and that mankind 
will be periodically faced with wars which may be as dis- 
astrous to us and to our own civilization as to that of the rest 
of the world." 6 We have seen that in 1931 and 1932 the diplo- 
macy of America was, in all conscience, quite sufficiently ham- 
strung by American isolationism. In the years from 1935 to 
1939 Stimson was forced to watch a demonstration of still 
greater and more damaging folly. But he did not watch in 
silence. 

In the early i93o's many Americans were persuaded by a 
new school of writers that in 1917 they had gone to war not 
because of unrestricted submarine warfare, and still less be- 
cause Imperial Germany threatened the world's freedom, but 
because of the munitions makers, the bankers, and the sly 
propagandists of England and France. In these years still more 
Americans became convinced by the same writers that, what- 
ever the reason for American participation in the First World 
War, it had been a ghastly mistake ; in a reaction against the un- 
critical idealism with which they had at first draped their cru- 

Democracy and Nationalism, p. 86. 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 309 

sade, the American people turned to an attitude of blanket 
repudiation of all war for any purpose. This was the time in 
which men who a few years later would be doing manful 
service in the great effort to arouse the country to a clear and 
present danger were too often found among those who had 
helped forge the chains of a neutrality designed to keep the 
country out of the First World War and most imperfectly 
designed at that. 

The first result of the new attitude was a changed view of 
neutrality; in the belief that it was trade with belligerents 
which had dragged America into the earlier war, Congress 
undertook to legislate a prohibition on such trade. The first 
such legislation was passed in the summer of 1935; it was 
renewed and extended in 1936 and 1937; it still remained in 
force in 1939 when war canie. Stimson's opposition began 
before the first joint resolution was passed, and increased in 
vigor and outspokenness as the menace of aggression steadily 
grew. 

On April 25, 1935, he discussed the concept of neutrality 
before the American Society of International Law. He repu- 
diated both the traditional neutrality which would trade with 
all belligerents and the new "isolation" which would trade 
with none. He argued that war itself was the central evil, and 
that once "a serious war" had begun, the United States would 
suffer heavily whether it went in or not. "It is more important 
to prevent war anywhere than to steer our course after war has 
come" ; "manifestly war can only be prevented by co-opera- 
tion" ; "there is no place of human activities where the maxim 
'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' is so true as 
it is in the realm of international relations." And finally, 
"Neutrality offers no certain road for keeping out of war. The 
only certain way to keep out .of a great war is to prevent that 
war from taking place, and the only hope of preventing war 
or even seriously restricting it is by the earnest, intelligent, and 
unselfish co-operation of the nations of the world toward that 
end. Until America is willing with sympathy and intelligence 
to do her part in such an endeavor, the life of our whole 
modern civilization may be at the mercy of the next war." 

It will bring into relief the degree to which American 



3 io ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

opinion had hardened, ever since 1933, if we note that the posi- 
tive acts of co-operation for which Stimson argued in this 
speech were no more than a restatement of his own doctrine of 
consultation, set forth in August, 1932, and of the assurance 
given by Norman Davis at Geneva in 1933 that the United 
States would do nothing to interfere with collective action by 
the League of Nations against a nation which Americans 
agreed was aggressive. No such restatement of executive policy 
was forthcoming, either at this time or for nearly four years 
afterward. The Davis statement had been the highest point of 
American postwar co-operation; it was not favorably received 
in Congress, and until late in 1938 the President and Secretary 
Hull, whatever their private sentiments, felt unable to play 
any part in the European struggle for collective security. 

Later in 1935, when Italy invaded Ethiopia, Stimson was 
reluctantly driven to a direct appeal for more energetic Presi- 
dential leadership. Contemplating this colonial war of aggres- 
sion, Congress had passed a "Neutrality Act" which required 
an embargo on the export of arms to declared belligerents. It 
at once became apparent, in Stimson's view, that the attempt 
to legislate peace was a clumsy failure. In this case, as he 
pointed out in a letter to the New York Times and a radio 
broadcast, the failure lay mainly in the narrowness of the 
legislation, which gave the President no power to prevent the 
shipment of oil and other munitions. The United States thus 
lacked authority for effective co-operation with the League 
powers in their attempt to impose economic sanctions. 

But Stimson's main argument this time was addressed to the 
Chief Executive. He pointed out that not a word had been 
said by the administration as to the issues here involved 
the moral issue between an aggressor and its victim, the 
political issue between collective security and international 
anarchy. Here Stimson saw a clear duty of leadership; he 
believed that if the President should make his appeal on basic 
moral and political grounds he would be able to enforce a 
general voluntary trade embargo against Italy. "The public 
opinion of America is not indifferent to moral issues. The great 
masses of our countrymen do not wish to drift into a position 
of blocking the efforts of other nations to stamp out war. The 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 311 

only person who can effectively rouse and marshal moral opin- 
ion is the President of the United States, and when he tries 
to do so I have no doubt of his eventual success. The most 
adventurous of our traders would promptly realize the folly 
of expecting protection in their dangerous adventure if the 
Commander in Chief of our American Army and Navy made 
clear to them the implications of this war. Such an announce- 
ment from America would by its encouragement of the earnest 
efforts of the nations of the world in their struggle for peace 
go a long distance toward insuring the eventual success of that 
struggle." 7 

Stimson's next attack on the prevailing attitude was de- 
livered in October, 1937, when Japan began her war in China. 
The Japanese, he argued, were encouraged by events in the 
rest of the world. "The Fascist dictators of Italy and Germany 
have boldly and successfully carried through coups invoking in 
Ethiopia, the Rhineland, and Spain acts of treaty violation 
and indefensible aggression. On the other hand, the peaceful 
democracies of the world . . . have yielded to these lawless 
acts of the dictators with a lack of their customary spirit. . . . 
In America, occupying the most safe and defensible position 
in the world, there has been no excuse except faulty reasoning 
for the wave of ostrich-like isolationism which has swept over 
us and by its erroneous form of neutrality legislation has 
threatened to bring upon us in the future the very dangers of 
war which we now are seeking to avoid." 8 

The Japanese attack, he continued, raised questions of the 
most urgent character, and after a careful disclaimer of any 
intent to make more difficult the trying task of the State De- 
partment, he gave his general view of the proper American 
course. Granting that American military action in Asia was 
probably "impossible" and certainly "abhorrent to our peo- 
ple," and insisting, as he always had and would, that the final 
destiny of China must depend on China herself, he neverthe- 
less argued that the United States was not bound to "a passive 
and shameful acquiescence in the wrong that is now being 
done." For a simple weapon of great strength was ready at 

7 Address delivered over the Columbia Broadcasting System, October 23, 1935. 

8 Letter to the New York Times, October 6, 1937. 



3 i2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

hand, and in language as diplomatic as it was clear Stimson 
came out flatly in favor of a trade embargo against Japan, 
pointing out her complete dependence on the American and 
British markets, particularly the former. His position was set 
forth in paragraphs that stated his basic attitude on aggres- 
sion with the clarity which was now permitted to him as a 
private citizen. 

"The present situation brings out ... the deep-seated error 
which has pervaded recent American thinking on international 
matters. I have heard Theodore Roosevelt say that he put 
peace above everything except righteousness. Where the two 
came into conflict he supported righteousness. In our recent 
efforts to avoid war we have reversed this principle and are 
trying to put peace above righteousness. We have thereby gone 
far toward killing the influence of our country in the progress 
of the world. At the same time, instead of protecting, we have 
endangered our own peace. 

"Our recent neutrality legislation attempts to impose a dead 
level of neutral conduct on the part of our Government be- 
tween right and wrong, between an aggressor and its victim, 
between a breaker of the law of nations and the nations who are 
endeavoring to uphold the law. It won't work. Such a policy 
of amoral drift by such a safe and powerful nation as our own 
will only set back the hands of progress. It will not save us 
from entanglement. It will even make entanglement more cer- 
tain. History has already amply shown this last fact." 

If the Japanese wished to fight a nation which acted by 
economic measures to obstruct aggression, Stimson was pre- 
pared to face the consequences. But he expected no such 
result, in 1937. 

The proposal of an embargo fell on ears not less deaf than 
those of the Hoover administration had been in 1932 and 1933. 
Only the day before Stimson's letter Mr. Roosevelt had 
delivered his famous Chicago speech denouncing the peace- 
breakers and intimating his belief in a "quarantine" of aggres- 
sors. From this speech Stimson at once took hope, but in the 
months that followed Mr. Roosevelt seemed to conclude 
that the country was not ready for strong medicine, and the 
speech remained an isolated episode in a continuing pattern 
of inaction. 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 313 

In Congress, indeed, the legislative peacemaking of the 
ostrich era was capped by the attempt at the turn of the year 
to enact the so-called "Ludlow Resolution for a National 
Referendum on a Declaration of War," under which any 
declaration of war, except in reply to a direct attack, would 
have had to be subjected to a national referendum before it 
could be executed. This remarkable proposal seemed to Stim- 
son a final blow at the authority and discretion of the Govern- 
ment in foreign affairs, and he wrote a full and detailed analy- 
sis of its failings in a letter published by the New York Times 
on December 21, 1937. This was to him a congressional abdica- 
tion of all responsibility for foreign affairs; in addition it 
would certainly strike all aggressors and potential aggressors 
as a further demonstration that American foreign policy was 
in the end dependent on a political campaign. The Ludlow 
Resolution never passed, but at one time it seemed very likely 
to succeed. For Stimson this was the high point in the prewar 
self-deception of the American people. 

In 1938, Stimson made no' major public statement on foreign 
affairs. His stand was clear, and in any case he was heavily 
occupied in the largest single lawsuit of his career. He was 
equally busy in the following year, but the pressure and tempo 
of events was such that he felt driven to put aside his law 
three times in the first four months of 1939. 

His first statement was on the war in Spain. It was a closely 
reasoned legal argument for the enforcement of the well- 
established rule of international law that Sve should furnish 
arms to the government that had been recognized as legal, and 
to no other.' In the case of Spain this was the Loyalist govern- 
ment. This was a statement which Stimson was sorry he had 
not made sooner. He had made no secret of his sympathy with 
the Loyalist side, but he had held back from direct opposition 
to the policy of the administration. By January, 1939, it was too 
late for any statement to be of much use, for the Republican 
government was at last being overcome by the superior force of 
fascist intervention. Stimson was not a left-winger, but he 
believed and repeatedly argued that "the Fascist was incom- 
parably more dangerous to us; more active in their proselytiz- 
ing, more outrageous and intolerant of international law and 
methods." And of course, in the case of Spain, it remained a 



314 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

clear and simple fact that the Republicans were the legal and 
elected government, recognized as such by the United States; 
nor were the Spanish Loyalists in any sense a purely communist 
government. 

I n X 939 general war was imminent, and in 1939 Franklin 
Roosevelt began his long battle to turn the American people 
toward the enemy. In March and April of that year Stimson 
delivered two statements in support of the President's cam- 
paign to bring pressure against aggression by methods "short 
of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words." One 
was an appeal for modification of the Neutrality Act. The 
arguments Stimson used in this statement were similar to those 
already discussed. The other was a letter to the Times in which 
Stimson developed for the first time the basic conviction which 
dominated his thinking for the next six years. 

By now he had long since discarded his hope of 1934 that 
the Nazi revolution might break down of its own weight. It 
was clear that Hitler had been permitted to gain strength and 
pass from one success to another until, in company with his 
Italian and Japanese colleagues, he represented an over- 
whelming threat to Western civilization. This letter called in 
effect for a direct military understanding among the United 
States, Great Britain, and France, for use in the event of war; 
Stimson also paid his respects to the faint remaining hope of 
peace by urging that if anything could stop the Nazis, it would 
be the spectacle of united and determined democratic opposi- 
tion. But the heart of the letter is its statement of the basic 
issues; this was the foundation of belief on which Stimson's 
whole course of action in the following years was based : 

"Fascism ... is a radical attempt to reverse entirely the 
long evolution out of which our democracies of Europe and 
America have grown, and ... it constitutes probably the 
most serious attack on their underlying principles which those 
principles have eyer met. 

"We know now that the inhabitants of those countries from 
childhood up, by means of meticulous and absolute govern- 
ment control and by the skillful use of modern engines and 
methods of mass propaganda, are being taught to reject free- 
dom ; to scorn the principles of government by discussion and 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 315 

persuasion instead of force, and to despise the neighboring 
nations which practice such principles. We now know that 
those fascist nations have created a skillful technique for 
foreign aggression and that they are in fact girded under vir- 
tual martial law for threats and, if necessary, for acts of force 
upon their neighbors. . . . 

" Furthermore, fascism has involved a serious moral deteri- 
oration ; an increasing and callous disregard of the most formal 
and explicit international obligations and pledges; extreme 
brutality toward helpless groups of people; the complete 
destruction within their jurisdiction of that individual free- 
dom of speech, of thought, and of the person which has been 
the priceless goal of many centuries of struggle and the most 
distinctive crown of our modern civilization. . . . 

"It strongly suggests that in our modern interdependent 
world Lincoln's saying holds true, that a house so divided 
against itself cannot permanently stand. Today the neighbors 
of a fascist nation are compelled to live in anticipation of 
immediate forceful attack. Such a situation is obviously the 
reversal of all civilized international society as we have known 
it in the past . . . 

"There is a flood of reaction and violence overrunning the 
world today. Our faith is that this is temporary; that the great 
progress of many long centuries will not be permanently lost 
but that after the social and economic dislocations caused by 
the Great War are readjusted the progress in freedom and in 
the humanities will be resumed. In the meanwhile and until 
the present violence has spent its force that flood must be held 
back from overwhelming us 

"I am unalterably opposed to the doctrine preached in 
many quarters that our Government and our people must treat 
the nations on both sides of this great issue with perfect im- 
partiality; that, for example, we must sell to a nation which 
has violated its treaties with us as well as trampled upon the 
humanities of our civilization the very instruments with which 
to continue its wrongdoing quite as freely as we sell to its 
victim the instruments for its self-defense. 

"I am opposed to such doctrine because I am confident that 
we are confronting an organized attack upon the very basis of 



316 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

our civilization and because I know that this civilization was 
only achieved by the development of what we call law and 
the humanities; by the respect for justice and fair play to all 
men ; by the principle of the sovereignty of reason rather than 
force and by the Christian principle of the equal value of all 
human personalities. 

"Such a civilization can only be preserved if we keep alive 
in our people their faith in these underlying principles. And I 
see no surer way of destroying their faith than by teaching 
them that in such a conflict as is now going on in the world 
neither they nor their government shall discriminate between 
right and wrong, between an aggressor and his victim, between 
an upholder of law and a violator thereof. . . . 

"We cannot ignore the fact that at almost any moment an 
armed attack may be aimed by the fascist group of powers 
against the vital safety of one of the two peace-loving nations 
upon which today rests in large part the safety of our own 
civilization Great Britain and France. 

"Such an attack would almost inevitably involve both of 
those nations and from present appearances would be co- 
operated in by all three of the fascist powers. In that event 
only one course could be depended on ultimately to save the 
present hard-earned civilization upon which our own national 
welfare rests." 9 

Thus in 1939 Stimson foresaw that if war came it would 
become the duty of America to prevent a fascist victory. How 
much that duty would require, and how deeply he himself 
would be concerned with it, he had of course no way of 
knowing. 

Meanwhile the year wore on from spring to summer, and 
in Europe the air grew tense with impending crisis. Stimson 
canceled his plans for a European vacation. In August the 
German dictator brought off his deal with Moscow, and as 
August turned to September the Second World War began. 

The coming of war in 1939, not for the first or last time in 
Stimson's life, was a relief. It seemed to mark the end of the 
hopeless years of concession and appeasement. He shared the 

9 Letter to New York Times, March 6, 1939. 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 317 

^prevailing opinion of the Western democratic world, that 
Britain and France would win their war. His confidence in 
tdxe French Army was strong, and he approved the strategy of 
delay and attrition that was adopted by the Allies in the first 
months after the conquest of Poland. He was deeply angered 
"by talk of a "phony" war. 

This misplaced confidence did not blind him to the great 
:issues that still hung in the balance, and he lent his weight to 
the administration in the fight to repeal the arms embargo, in 
September and October. His position was best stated in a radio 
:speech of October 5. The embargo legislation had been a wan- 
ton encouragement of aggression ; its repeal would be morally 
and materially a forward step. Britain and France were fight- 
ing our battle, and any help to them was the best way of avoid- 
ing war in the future. Thus far it was much the same argu- 
ment that others used, but we may note that Stimson denied 
that the central issue was "how to keep the United States out 
of war." The "ultimate end" was rather the safety of the nation. 
"A time might well come when the only way to preserve the 
security of the people of the United States would be to fight 
for that security." 

Through the winter of 1939-1940 Stimson, with the rest 
of the world, watched and waited. Like most Americans he 
disapproved of the Soviet attack on Finland, and he acted as 
a personal liaison between Mr. Hoover and the State Depart- 
ment in the work of the former for Finnish relief. He con- 
tinued his activity in support of an embargo against Japan, 
which still seemed unwise to the administration. But his mind 
was on the Western Front. 

The explosion of Nazi power into Denmark, Norway, Bel- 
gium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France made the spring 
of 1940 a nightmare that none who lived through it can ever 
iorget. It became clear that the Nazi war machine had been 
tragically underestimated, and it also appeared that not one 
of the invaded nations was as strong as had been thought. In 
a. short ten-week period the whole aspect of the war was 
changed, and Great Britain was left alone, as the last outpost 
of freedom in Europe. 

The effect in the United States was immediate. On the one 



318 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

hand there developed a nearly unanimous determination to 
double and redouble American military strength, and enor- 
mous appropriations were hurriedly passed by Congress. On 
the other hand the great debate on foreign policy was renewed 
with greater violence than ever. Those who felt that the battle 
against Hitler was an American one argued that now more 
than ever the British needed help; their opponents reiterated 
the view that Europe's internecine strife was no concern of the 
United States. 

In this atmosphere Stimson went to New Haven for the Yale 
Commencement of June, 1940. After addressing the alumni on 
the subject of compulsory military training, he retired from 
the Commencement celebrations to prepare a radio speech 
which he delivered on the following night, June 18. This 
speech fully set forth his principles and policies in the face 
of the crisis ; he later felt that its delivery, putting him squarely 
on record before he accepted public office, was one of the 
most fortunate accidents of his life. As an advocate of this 
policy he entered the Cabinet, and his position was always 
well known to those who dealt with him ; he was thus spared 
the constant pressure to trim and hedge which beset the other 
members of the Government. 

"The United States today," he began, "faces probably the 
greatest crisis in its history." Civilization had developed on 
the basis of certain principles and "today there has come a 
reversal of all these principles, both international and do- 
mestic, on the part of a group of powerful governments." He 
restated more strongly than ever his conviction that the world 
was a house divided, and that a totalitarian victory would 
mean the end of freedom throughout the world, for individuals 
as for nations. 

Against this background Stimson sketched his view of the 
existing military situation. He found "an appalling prospect." 
Only one force remained between the Nazis and the Western 
Hemisphere the British Fleet. The British Fleet, therefore, 
must be sustained; if it should be lost, America, almost un- 
armed, must stand alone against the world. But if the British 
Fleet should stand unconquered, supported by American aid 
and reinforced by air power, which must also be based largely 



TOWARD GENERAL WAR 319 

on American production, defeat might be prevented ; the Nazis 
might be held. America must therefore support the British 
Navy, and it followed that she must support and encourage 
the people of Great Britain. So Stimson came to his recom- 
mendations: 

"First, we should repeal the provisions of our ill-starred 
so-called neutrality venture which have acted as a shackle to 
our true interests for over five years. 

"Second, we should throw open all of our ports to the 
British and French naval and merchant marine for all repairs 
and refueling and other naval services. 

"Third, we should accelerate by every means in our power 
the sending of planes and other munitions to Britain and 
France 10 on a scale which would be effective ; sending them if 
necessary in our own ships and under convoy. 

"Fourth, we should refrain from being fooled by the evident 
bluff of Hitler's so-called fifth-column movements in South 
America. On the face of them, they are attempts to frighten 
us from sending help where it will be most effective. 

"Fifth, in order to assist the home front of Britain's defense 
we should open our lands as a refuge for the children and old 
people of Britain whose liability to suffering from air raids 
in Great Britain is a constant inducement to surrender to terms 
which she would otherwise resist. [This last phrase, as Stim- 
son later recognized, was a quite unwarranted underestimate 
of British courage.] 

"Sixth, we should, every one of us, combat the defeatist 
arguments which are being made in this country as to the un- 
conquerable power of Germany. I believe that if we use our 
brains and curb our prejudices we can, by keeping command 
of the sea, beat her again as we did in 1918. 

"Finally, we should at once adopt a system of universal 
compulsory training and service which would not only be the 
most potent evidence that we are in earnest, but which is at 
the present moment imperative if we are to have men ready 
to operate the planes and other munitions, the creation of which 
Congress has just authorized by a practically unanimous vote. 

"In these ways, and with the old American spirit of courage 

10 France did not capitulate until four days later. 



320 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and leadership behind them, I believe we should find our 
people ready to take their proper part in this threatened world 
and to carry through to victory, freedom, and reconstruction." 

Short of a direct declaration of war, it would have been 
hard to frame a more complete program of resistance to the 
Nazis. And a declaration of war, then and for months there- 
after, was not in Stirnson's mind. It could not be, because in 
years of dealing with foreign affairs he had learned the neces- 
sity for pitching policy to opinion. 

As it was, he had stepped well out in front of the President 
and most other leaders in the debate at least ahead of their 
published opinions. In the newspapers the next morning he 
found himself on the one hand a hero and on the other a villain. 
But he did not have much time to consider these reactions, for 
on the afternoon of June 19 he received a telephone call from 
the White House. 



PART THREE 
TIME OF PERIL 



CHAPTER XIII 

Call to Arms 



I. BACK TO WASHINGTON 

IN HIS New York office, on June 19, 1940, Stimson received 
a telephone call from the White House. "I was called up 
by the President who offered me the position of Secretary of 
War. He told me that Knox had already agreed to accept the 
position of Secretary of the Navy. The President said he was 
very anxious to have me accept because everybody was run- 
ning around at loose ends in Washington and he thought I 
would be a stabilizing factor in whom both the Army and the 
public would have confidence." To say that Stimson was sur- 
prised would be putting it mildly. He had known that Mr. 
Roosevelt was considering the appointment of one or two 
Republicans and that Frank Knox was among those being 
considered. Like everyone else, he knew that the Secretary of 
War, Woodring, was at odds with both the President and 
large parts of the Army. He did not suspect, however, that 
these troubles might affect him. Some weeks before, he had 
heard from Grenville Clark that his name had been suggested 
for the job. Clark had coupled it with that of Judge Robert 
P. Patterson as Assistant Secretary. He knew too that this 
suggestion had reached the President. But that the President 
should have listened to it, and acted on it, was astonishing. His 
first reaction was to point out that he was approaching his 
seventy-third birthday. The President said he already knew 
that, and added that Stimson would be free to appoint his own 
Assistant Secretary. Patterson's name was mentioned and ap- 
proved by both men. Stimson then asked for a few hours in 
which to consult his wife and his professional associates. 

333 



324 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

"I then discussed it with Bronson Winthrop, George Rob- 
erts [two of his partners] and Mabel. They all advised me to 
accept. About seven P.M. I telephoned the President and asked 
him three questions: (i) Whether he had seen my radio 
speech and whether it would be embarrassing to him. He re- 
plied that he had already read it and was in full accord with 
it. (2) I asked him whether he knew that I was in favor of 
general compulsory military service, and he said he did and 
gave me to understand that he was in sympathy with me. (3) 
I asked him whether Knox had accepted and he said he had. 

"I then accepted." (Diary, June 25, 1940) 

Stimson was inclined later to think this diary entry a trifle 
laconic ; conversation with Franklin Roosevelt was seldom so 
stern and simple. It nevertheless contained the meat of what 
was said on both sides. Neither man mentioned any political 
aspect of the appointment. The only bargain struck on either 
side was an agreement that Stimson would be free to appoint 
Patterson as his own principal assistant. It was understood on 
both sides, then and later, that politics was not relevant; it was 
equally understood that Stimson was to be the undisputed 
head of his own Department. These understandings remained 
unbroken to the end. 

The appointment of Stimson and Knox was announced on 
June 20, and Stimson speedily learned that he was a highly 
controversial figure. The chairman of the Republican Na- 
tional Committee read him out of the party, and Republican 
pique was general. The Republicans were about to begin their 
convention, and their minds were so firmly fixed on politics 
that they insisted on describing the President's maneuver as a 
political dodge. This was probably true, in part; Stimson was 
not inclined to deny that Franklin Roosevelt was a talented 
politician. But it did not seem to him that the Republican 
outburst was a skillful riposte. There was little political ad- 
vantage in the repudiation of two stanch Republicans merely 
because in a time of crisis they had been willing to take office. 
In effect, the Republican outcry was a kindness to the Presi- 
dent; it turned over to him what credit there might be in 
rising above party prejudice. To Stimson personally it mat- 
tered very little ; few of the present spokesmen of the party 



CALL TO ARMS 325 

were his friends, and from those Republicans who were close 
to him he had many letters of approval and congratulation. 
Should this outburst mean that his party intended in the crisis 
to take a generally obstructionist position, it would be a grave 
disappointment, but his familiarity with the atmosphere of 
conventions led him to postpone any such gloomy conclusion. 
His party had been caught off balance, and some unfortunate 
statements had been made ; perhaps there was nothing more to 
it perhaps the sentiment of the Republican rank and file was 
more accurately represented by young Harold Stassen, the 
Republican keynoter, who rejected efforts to make him de- 
nounce Knox and Stimson, choosing instead to argue that the 
President in his hour of need was forced to turn to the Grand 
Old Party for help. 

The immediate problem now was in the Senate, where his 
nomination must be confirmed. On July 2 Stimson appeared 
before the Committee on Military Affairs, to which his name 
had been referred. This was a new experience. Four times 
before his name had been submitted to the Senate, and by four 
different presidents. In none of these earlier cases had his 
fitness been seriously questioned. This seemed an odd time to 
begin. His first reaction was one of annoyance ; his second was 
more pugnacious if these people wanted to heckle him, he 
would find it pleasant to hit back. His third thought, and the 
controlling one, was that he must so conduct himself as not to 
embarrass his new chief, while at the same time clearly stating 
his understanding of the responsibility for which he had been 
named. 

So in his opening statement to the committee he reviewed 
his position. "The purpose of our military policy is ... to pro- 
tect from attack the territory and rights of the United States. 
. . . No one wishes to send American troops beyond our borders 
unless the protection of the United States makes such action 
absolutely necessary. On the other hand I do not believe that 
the United States can be safely protected by a purely passive 
or defensive defense. I do not believe that we shall be safe 
from invasion if we sit down and wait for the enemy to attack 
our shores." 

This last point he developed in detail. He related it to the 



326 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Monroe Doctrine, and pointed out how modern warfare had 
forced an extension of our line of defense "far out into the 
Atlantic Ocean." This ocean and the bases controlling it 
were now gravely menaced. The menace came from potential 
enemies of a character unique in history. Not only were they 
engaged in systematic aggression, but once successful they 
need fear no rebellion. "Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun 
did not possess tanks, airplanes, or modern guns, nor could 
they enforce their rules on their victims by a carefully or- 
ganized secret police like the Gestapo. . . . The modern con- 
queror, when once he gets into power, will last for a long time. 
... I feel that \ve are faced with an unprecedented peril." 

The existence of this peril was no pleasure to Stimson; he 
had not conjured it up as a source of excitement for his declin- 
ing years. Yet some such idea seemed to be in the minds of 
those who were calling him a warmonger, so he continued on 
a more personal note. "I am one of those many people who 
after the great war labored earnestly for disarmament and for 
the establishment among the nations of a system which should 
be based upon a reign of law rather than of force, and I regard 
it as a world tragedy that all such efforts should have resulted 
in failure; but the facts have to be faced today." 

As a beginning in facing the facts, the President had recom- 
mended and the Congress had authorized great appropriations 
for increased military strength. This was a good start, but only 
a start. Other things than money were needed. Stimson em- 
phasized two time and spirit. Time could be gained only if 
the British fleet were sustained. Spirit could best be developed 
by "establishing a system of selective compulsory training and 
service." Such a system was in any case essential, because re- 
cruiting had already failed; but what Stimson emphasized 
was its value to the morale of the nation. A country in peril 
must be united in knowing its danger and working for its 
safety. 

As for the New Haven speech, it had been made by a private 
citizen. "When you are a private citizen you can speak upon 
matters which are of concern to the whole Government. When 
you are the Secretary of War your duty is to confine yourself 
to preparing the national defense of the United States so that 



CALL TO ARMS 327 

it will be ready to be used when the President and the Con- 
gress ... say the word, and that is the extent of your duty.' 1 
He was not a stranger to public office ; he understood its re- 
sponsibilities, and the importance of "prudence and care." 
Still there was nothing to be taken back in the New Haven 
speech ; it might not fit precisely with the requirements of the 
moment as seen from an official position, but "everything that 
I have said or advocated has been said in the interest of the 
defense of the United States, and that alone. I have had no 
other motive for what I have been talking about, and it is the 
same one I will represent here if I am confirmed by you 
gentlemen as Secretary of War the defense of the United 
States." 

This statement of his position did not satisfy all the mem- 
bers of the committee. For nearly two hours they questioned 
him, with the extensive assistance of two Senators not mem- 
bers of the committee, Vandenberg and Taft. The majority of 
the committee were sympathetic; their few questions were 
simple and friendly. But a few were less gentle. Fortunately 
the crowd at the hearing was mainly friendly, and for Stim- 
son it was warm work but not unpleasant. 

Was he a member of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Rob- 
erts? No. Well, he was listed as counsel. "That is a euphemistic 
term for a gentleman who sits in an office without sharing the 
profits." (Laughter.) Did this firm have any clients with inter- 
national investments? He didn't think so, but he didn't know, 
because he wasn't a partner. Did he have any such clients him- 
self? "I do not." Had he been present at a secret meeting of 
eighteen prominent bankers to organize the Committee to 
Defend America by Aiding the Allies? He had, but it was 
not a secret meeting; it had been held openly in one of the 
largest clubs in New York; not all of those present had been 
bankers, and the purpose of the meeting had been to meet Mr. 
William Allen White. 

This was foolishness, but some of the questions were more 
serious. Stimson refused to be drawn into a discussion of his 
predecessor Woodring ; he refused to say that he would never 
approve the transfer of American arms to other nations; he 
firmly denied that this position was the same as approval of 



328 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

"stripping our own defenses for the sake of trying to stop Hitler 
3,000 miles away." 

As for his relations to the President, of course they had had 
differences on domestic issues. No, this did not mean that they 
could not co-operate for national defense. He explained to 
the committee exactly how he had been appointed ; the whole 
thing had no relation to politics. He was out of politics now. 
He retained his convictions, but he had a right to subordinate 
their expression to the paramount duty he had accepted from 
the President; his position was the same as that of any officer 
of the United States Army. 

In the same way he refused to be drawn into discussion of 
matters that were properly the business of the President or the 
Secretary of State. He was unwilling to discuss the detailed 
present application of policies he had advocated in 1939. The 
more he was quoted the better his prophecies seemed, but he 
must repeat that the Secretary of War does not make policy in 
foreign affairs. "Policy is determined by other branches of the 
Government, and it is his duty to prepare for the troubles 
that may be brought about by their determinations." 
(Laughter.) 

Senator Vandenberg was courteous and his questions were 
fair. Would the policies advocated in the New Haven speech 
amount to acts of war? Stimson refused a direct answer; he 
preferred to call them legitimate acts of self-defense in an 
emergency in which traditional concepts of neutrality no 
longer applied. He further pointed out that as Secretary of 
War these would not be his problems to decide. The Vanden- 
berg questions were the most interesting and sensible that he 
was asked by any opposition Senator, however, and on his re- 
turn to New York after the hearing he sent a written statement 
to the committee and to Senator Vandenberg pointing out that 
many close students of international law felt that the whole 
theory of neutrality vis-a-vis an aggressor had disappeared 
with the Kellogg-Briand Pact, so that any of the acts advocated 
in his New Haven speech would be fully legal under interna- 
tional law. 

After Vandenberg came Taft; only the day before, both 
these gentlemen had seen their ambitions thwarted by the nomi- 
nation of a dark horse to be Republican candidate for Presi- 



CALL TO ARMS 329 

dent, and Stimson allowed himself the small satisfaction of 
asking the chairman if he also had Wendell Willkie around. 
But to Taft this was no laughing matter. Neither was it to 
Stimson ; he sought no conflict with the son of his old friend 
and chief, and the only regret he carried away from the hear- 
ing was that the questions put to him by Robert Taft should 
have been so pointedly unfriendly. Here was no effort to find 
out what he really thought ; it was a debater's attempt to make 
him say things. he did not mean, and it was not worthy of a son 
of William Taft. And the worst of it was that Senator Taft, 
driven by his own bitter convictions, could see no unfairness 
in what he was doing. 

First Taft remarked that Stimson had presented a novel 
view of the functions of a Cabinet officer. How could he argue 
that his general views were not relevant to his work as Secre- 
tary of War? His views and advice, as given to the President, 
would be just as important as the administration of the War 
Department. How could he immunize his views? Taft here 
made a fair point; Stimson's opening statement was too strong 
in its insistence that a Secretary of War should confine himself 
to preparing the national defense. Although he would not have 
the responsibility for foreign affairs, he would certainly be an 
adviser. Stimson acknowledged his error, admitting that he 
could not immunize himself ; it was for that reason, he said, 
that he had been so frank with the committee. 

The discussion then turned back to the New Haven speech. 
Stimson remarked that since making the speech he had learned 
that the time for providing bases to the British fleet had prob- 
ably not come ; Great Britain's position was not quite as desper- 
ate as he had thought, and she could still use her own bases. 
"Then," said Senator Taft, "as I understand you, you are in 
favor of joining in the war just as soon as you figure that the 
British have no longer a chance." 

"That is not quite a fair way of putting it. So long as there 
is a chance of preserving their fleet and so long as it is evident 
that without our doing that [providing bases] . . . , they would 
not be preserved, then I think that we ought to do it." 

And then Taft tried to force other conclusions. Would Stim- 
son favor giving credits to the British if they ran out of money? 
Would he go to war to prevent the defeat of England? It was 



330 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

not the questions but the manner of their asking that was 
offensive. Each time Taf t tried to frame a conclusion and put 
it in Stimson's mouth. And each time Stimson refused to eat; 
Taft had so framed the question as to leave out an essential 
condition. The question of credits to the British would depend 
on the circumstances at the time, and so, much more, would 
the question of war. The essential element every time would 
be what were the best interests of the United States, and you 
could not tell in advance how events might affect those inter- 
ests. "Until you put in all of those conditions, you have got to 
refrain from asking dogmatic questions and I have to refrain 
from answering such questions." 

This was not Stimson's first brush with the isolationist mind, 
nor was it to be his last; this time he was especially hampered 
by the necessity of confining his remarks to lines which would 
not embarrass President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull, and 
of course it was just that embarrassment which Taft was eager 
to produce. That the Senator should try to gain his end by a 
cross-examination so narrow and mistrusting deeply disap- 
pointed Stimson. He was not personally damaged ; he felt after- 
ward that he had more than held his own. But this readiness, 
in a great national emergency, to seize every opportunity of 
embarrassing the administration seemed to him a fantastic 
distortion of partisan duty. He had been questioned for two 
hours, and not a word had been said about his competence to 
direct the Army; the whole discussion had turned on other 
subjects. This was to be the attitude of the isolationists for the 
next eighteen months whenever he went to the Capitol. In 
the Congress were some of the ablest and most f arsighted men 
in the country, and with their help the essential measures were 
passed, but the hearings and debates also became a sounding 
board for the hopelessly twisted views of a small group of 
men who, in the name of peace, would have kept America from 
acting to delay or block the greatest aggression in history. 

From the hearing Stimson went back to New York to com- 
plete the windup of his personal affairs. On July 8 he returned 
to Washington, moving into Woodley. It was good to be back 
in the house which, next only to Highhold, was his home. 

That same day he had a long talk with General Marshall, the 



CALL TO ARMS 331 

second since his nomination had been announced. George C. 
Marshall was an officer Stimson had known for over twenty 
years. His name had appeared on lists of especially qualified 
officers collected by Stimson for Theodore Roosevelt in 1916 
when the latter had hoped to raise a division. When Stimson 
was himself a soldier in 1918, he had met Marshall at the Staff 
College in Langres and had been so much impressed that ten 
years later he had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Marshall 
to go as his aide to the Philippines. Now he began to know and 
appreciate still better the quality of the Chief of Staff. He 
soon understood that the greatest problem a Secretary of War 
can have would never face him while Marshall was alive and 
well. He would not have to search the Army for a good top 
soldier. The right man was already there. Only once in the 
next five years did it occur to Stimson that he might need a 
new man, and that was when he was urging the appointment 
of General Marshall to what he then considered a still more 
difficult and critical position. 

It was only too clear that there was much to be done in the 
War Department: an enormous program of rearmament was 
only at its beginning; an equally great expansion of the Army's 
numbers was but sketchily charted ; no trusted staff of civilian 
assistants was at hand ; and meanwhile the last bastion of 
freedom in Europe was in deadly danger. But when Stimson's 
nomination was confirmed on July 9, by a vote of fifty-six to 
twenty-eight, he already felt that there were better days ahead. 
He was at work again, under a chief whom he was able 
to admire and like as a man, even as he respected him for his 
office. He was in charge of the United States Army, which for 
thirty years he had known and loved and trusted. And he had 
a good Chief of Staff. No man, he later said, could have asked 
more of fortune in a time of national peril. 

2. THE NEWCOMER 

When he was sworn in at the White House on July 10, 1940, 
Stimson entered an administration which had been in undis- 
puted control of the national government for over seven years. 
At first he felt some of the sensations of a college freshman, 



332 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and the kindness and co-operation which he found among his 
new colleagues were heartening. It was immediately clear 
that there was no division in Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet on 
the central issue the whole administration knew that the 
nation was in danger. Stimson had been appointed to take 
charge of the Army, and he was welcome. With Secretary Hull 
he had right at the start "the longest, most intimate and con- 
fidential talk I have ever had with him," and it was perhaps 
indicative of their new relationship that "for the first time he 
went into domestic politics as well as foreign affairs." (Diary, 
July 16, 1940) Stimson had his differences of opinion with 
Cordell Hull, then and later, but from his side at least there 
was never any lack of trust and affection for a man whose 
position in the government was a good deal more difficult than 
his own. 

A more surprising but equally gratifying cordiality was 
shown to Stimson on his arrival by Secretary Morgenthau. The 
Secretary of the Treasury had been closely concerned with 
many of the problems now entrusted to Stimson ; his Depart- 
ment had been drawn into military matters as a result of Mr. 
Roosevelt's lack of confidence in Stimson's predecessor. To 
Stimson now Morgenthau gave friendly and tactful help in 
learning the ropes. Much later, when Stimson was forced to 
disagree radically with Morgenthau in certain subjects, he 
remembered the kindness the latter had shown him when he 
most needed it. 

The new Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, was an ac- 
quaintance of nearly thirty years' standing. He had come to 
Stimson's office in the War Department at the end of 1911 
bearing the best possible introduction, a short note from T.R. 
at Sagamore Hill with the familiar and compelling recom- 
mendation, "He is just our type!" The record which Knox 
later made as a liberal Republican had won Stimson's respect, 
and in the spring of 1940 his voice, raised from Chicago in 
energetic advocacy of help to Britain and an end to partisan 
squabbles, had been even more impressive; in May and early 
June the two men had begun a correspondence full of the 
urgency both felt. In Washington Knox at once became to 
Stimson a friend in all things, and a partner in most. 



CALL TO ARMS 333 

As the months passed Stimson gradually became a well- 
established and familiar member of the government. Mr. 
Roosevelt's was an administration whose inherently disorderly 
nature he never learned to love, but for its individual members 
he soon came to have respect, and with most of them he estab- 
lished relations of friendly confidence. They were certainly 
not the collection of dangerous and unprincipled power seekers 
that he had heard denounced in New York for seven years. 
If as a group they had a failing, it was in their constant readi- 
ness for internecine strife, but for this they were perhaps less 
to blame than their chief, who not infrequently placed his bets 
on two subordinates at once. To Stimson the whole notion of 
such conflict was abhorrent, and he found that if he earnestly 
avoided battle he could generally disarm the advancing enemy. 
Much of the trouble grew out of the clashes of subordinates 
whose loyalty was not to the administration as a whole but to 
some part of it, and in these cases it was a sound rule to smoke 
a pipe of peace with the rival chieftain rather than to scamper 
to the White House with some one-sided grievance. Thus it 
became his practice to keep his troubles away from the Presi- 
dent as much as possible, and he found that with men like Hull, 
Morgenthau, Knox, Ickes, and Jackson he could usually reach 
a friendly answer to the questions noisily raised by subordinates. 
There were cases, later on, when no such answer could be found, 
and more than once Stimson found himself fully engaged in the 
unpleasant task of winning Presidential support for his posi- 
tion against that of a colleague, but such battles were never of 
his own choosing. 

Although he thus established effective working relations 
with its leaders, Stimson never became one of the special 
intimates of the administration, and he occasionally felt that 
the President listened too much to men who were not his 
direct constitutional advisers. Fortunately, the principal ad- 
viser of this kind was Harry Hopkins, a man for whom Stim- 
son quickly developed the greatest respect, and with whom 
he established a relation of such close mutual confidence that 
he was often able to present the position of the War Depart- 
ment more effectively through Hopkins than he could in 
direct conversation with the President. Hopkins was an ex- 



334 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

traordinary figure; he possessed a mind of unusual quickness 
and flexibility, and a sure judgment of both men and affairs; 
his special value to the President lay in his combination of 
complete loyalty and a sensitive understanding of Mr. Roose- 
velt's complex nature. During Stimson's years in Washington, 
the great influence of Hopkins was time and again exerted on 
behalf of the War Department. "The more I think of it, the 
more I think it is a godsend that he should be at the White 
House." (Diary, March 5, 1941) 

Another White House u godsend" was Major General Edwin 
M. Watson, called "Pa" by half official Washington. Watson's 
extraordinary personal friendliness and conviviality covered a 
discerning mind and a strong heart and, like Hopkins, Watson 
loved his chief too well to withhold frank advice and counsel. 
To Stimson he was invariably a sympathetic and knowing 
helper. 

No discussion of Stimson's relationship to the administra- 
tion would be complete without one further name, that of 
Mr. Justice Frankfurter. Without the least deviation from his 
fastidious devotion to the high traditions of the Supreme 
Court, Felix Frankfurter made himself a continual source of 
comfort and help to Stimson. Although he never heard a word 
of it from Frankfurter, Stimson believed that his own pres- 
ence in Washington was in some degree the result of Frank- 
furter's close relationship to the President. In any event, he 
found Frankfurter always the most devoted of friends and 
the most zealous of private helpers, and the Justice's long and 
intimate knowledge of the Roosevelt administration was 
placed entirely at his disposal. Time after time, when critical 
issues developed, Stimson turned to Frankfurter; sometimes 
he heard from Frankfurter even before he had turned. It is 
not fitting that the activities of a Justice still serving on the 
Court should be discussed in detail, and Mr. Justice Frank- 
furter will not be mentioned again; there was in his relation- 
ship with Stimson nothing, of course, that even remotely 
touched upon his duties as a Justice, while there was much 
that added to the country's debt to a distinguished American. 

And as time passed, Stimson fully clarified his purpose and 
his position in the eyes of the professional politicians and 



CALL TO ARMS 335 

Congress. After the first loud objections to his appointment, 
on the ground that it was the product of a devious political 
mind, there was not much noise until just after the election, 
when there were rumors that now the superannuated Repub- 
lican stopgap would resign, his function fulfilled. "Of course 
it is not a pleasant matter and troubled . . . me ... a good 
deal, so I decided to take it up with the President after the 
Cabinet meeting. I did so and he was very nice about it and 
I found out from him then that he had already this morning 
taken the matter up at his press conference. The question had 
been asked him on the subject and he had stigmatized it 'off 
the record' as a lie, and 'on the record' that it was only imag- 
inary." (Diary, November 8, 1940) Stimson never knew 
whether the President had originally intended that he should 
stay indefinitely as Secretary of War, but this interview in 
November was typical of the response he met from the White 
House on the two or three Jater occasions when he was con- 
cerned about his usefulness to his chief. On the whole it 
seemed likely that the President thought about the matter as 
little as Stimson himself. The latter had believed in the be- 
ginning that he would be in Washington perhaps a year or 
eighteen months, until the War Department was fully abreast 
of its duties and the work had become routine. No such time 
ever developed, and by the spring of 1941 he no longer 
thought of any early end to his labors. He and Knox had 
established themselves as permanent members of the admin- 
istration. 

As doubts about his permanence died down, he found him- 
self in an unusual position, politically. He owed nothing to 
anybody except the President who had appointed him, and 
the President demanded absolutely none of the usual political 
support and assistance. This independence Stimson demon- 
strated in the campaign of 1940 by maintaining a silence so 
complete that, as he remarked to a friend, 'no one but my 
Maker knows how I am going to vote.' The diary entry of 
October 27 explains this decision. "I shall not take any part 
in the campaign. I think that is more in accord with the job 
that I have taken and the way in which it was offered me 
and the way in which I have accepted it. I think it would 



336 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

probably be better for the President as well as myself if I 
remain as I have been a Republican doing nonpartisan work 
for a Democratic President because it related to international 
affairs in which I agreed and sympathized with his policies. 
To go actively into the campaign would arouse great antag- 
onism from a great many people on immaterial issues and 
would prevent me from doing the service that I want to do 
for the country and for the cause of national defense. Having 
made that decision I felt better and enjoyed my ride. . . ." 
As a matter of fact Stimson voted for Roosevelt; it was a 
natural decision, and perhaps many men guessed Stimson's 
mind, but he spoke no public word whatever, and his reasons 
for his vote, like his reasons for silence, were confided only 
to the diary: "Roosevelt has won another sweeping vic- 
tory. ... It is a tremendous relief to have this thing over and 
I think that from the standpoint of immediate events in the 
war, particularly during the coming spring and summer, the 
election will be very salutary to the cause of stopping Hitler." 
(Diary, November 6, 1940) 

This decision to remain completely out of politics Stimson 
considered one of the wisest he ever made. By it he and his 
Department avoided any responsibility for any part of the 
President's record except as it concerned the national defense ; 
he also avoided antagonism from the Republican side which 
would have been inevitable if he had thrown his weight pub- 
licly against the Republican candidate. He was thus able to 
maintain his position before Republicans in Congress as coun- 
sel for the situation. "Jim Wadsworth [Congressman James 
W. Wadsworth of New York, Stimson's old friend] came in 
to see me and I had a long talk with him. . . . He was very 
much impressed with the seriousness of the [international] 
situation and told me so. His advice was that I should get in 
touch with the Republicans so far as I could of the Congress. 

. . . He said was an honest man and that he trusted me, 

which I was very much surprised at and I told Wadsworth 
so. Wadsworth repeated it as being true of practically all of 
the Republicans." (Diary, January 24, 1941) 

At the same time, taking their cue from the President, the 
Democrats maintained a continuously friendly attitude to- 



CALL TO ARMS 337 

ward Stimson, accepting with good will his insistence that 
the War Department could not permit political considera- 
tions to control its decisions. He, for his part, maintained 
cordial relations with the Democratic leaders and, as always 
in his political life, found that once the central issue of parti- 
san opposition is removed, there are few roses so sweet as those 
that grow over the party wall. The following diary entry is 
typical; just before the 1940 election he learned that "a mis- 
take had been uncovered in the Adjutant General's Depart- 
ment in regard to Senator Pat Harrison's request for 
establishing a C.C.C. camp distribution system at McComb, 
Mississippi, instead of across the river in Louisiana. The 
Department had reported that it couldn't be done as cheaply 
in Mississippi as Louisiana. I was rather distressed at this 
because we have been obliged to refuse already one or two 
other requests of Harrison's who has always been a faithful 
and loyal helper in military matters. This seemed to me a 
request that we ought to be able to grant. It now appeared by 
telephone . . . that the Adjutant General was mistaken and 
that it could be granted more cheaply for McComb than for 
Louisiana, and I told Brooks at once to telegraph Harrison 
and his committee who were coming up to see me about it, 
that they needn't come and the request was granted. When I 
arrived back in Washington ... I found a very grateful tele- 
gram from him." (Diary, November 2, 1940) 

Only once in this period did Stimson have a painful re- 
minder of the baneful influence of politics. The diary entry 
speaks for itself. "Bob Patterson has been making a number 
of appointments in the Procurement Branch of the office 
this time of young lawyers to help out. All his appointments 
are good, chosen purely from a professional standpoint and 
men of high character. But among them he selected Henry 
Parkman, Jr., of Massachusetts, to be one of the attorneys of 
the Department and Parkman was the Republican candidate 
in Massachusetts last fall for Senator against Senator Walsh. 
Consequently when I got back to the Department yesterday 
I was met with a terrific telegram from Walsh, professing to 
be astounded at such an appointment; claiming that Parkman 
had conducted a very low campaign against him; stating that 



338 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

he was personally obnoxious to himself (Walsh) and demand- 
ing that I reconsider the appointment. This made a tough 
situation, for Walsh is quite capable of doing much harm to 
the Department's work up on the Hill and undoubtedly may 
try to do so. I had a talk with Patterson . . . and of course he 
was pretty stiff about not yielding, but unfortunately he has 
not got as much experience as I have had with the difficulties 
of such a situation with a hostile Senator. I talked with Park- 
man whom I had not met before but who was a very fine-look- 
ing fellow and evidently a good man and he was considerate 
enough to suggest that he had better withdraw. I told him not 
to do so for a while that I felt very badly about it and that 
I would talk with Walsh and see first what could be done. 
Unfortunately Walsh was not in Washington, so ... I called 
him on the long-distance telephone at Clinton, Massachusetts, 
and he nearly blew me off the end of the telephone, he was 
so angry and bitter. He is evidently making it a party matter, 
as the Democratic chairman has also written to Roosevelt 
about it. Of course it was not a party matter, but the trouble 
is no one will believe it. No one will believe that we did not 
both know that he was a Republican candidate for Senator, 
although as a matter of fact I had never heard of him. ... It 
is pretty hard to have such a thing happen, making the pos- 
sibility of such a critical mess to the Department. It brings 
out the delicacy of the situation in which I am, in a Demo- 
cratic Cabinet, and the good luck I have had thus far in 
avoiding trouble all through the political campaign. I am 
very anxious not to spoil all matters now by this kind of a row 
which may spread in all directions. On the other hand, it is 
very hard to sacrifice Parkman, although he was very nice 
about it, and his withdrawal will not really be commensurate 
with the harm that may be done to the Department." (Diary, 
December n, 1940) 

The core of the difficulty here was in the fact that Walsh, 
a vindictive man, was no friend to the President; he was 
also an isolationist. As a veteran Democrat quite prepared to 
cause maximum embarrassment to the administration in its 
policy toward the world crisis, he was extremely dangerous. 
Stimson reached his decision that same night. "I spent con- 



CALL TO ARMS 339 

siderable time in my bed last night thinking the thing out and 
finally came to the conclusion that it was my duty toward the 
job and toward the President not to allow this row with Walsh 
to come up in the Department, particularly because I did not 
want to have him raise the issue that he surely would raise 
of the President's conduct of the war, now, prematurely, be- 
fore the President has chosen his own ground." Stimson asked 
a close friend who also knew Parkman to explain the situation 
to the latter, and "Parkman came back and positively refused 
to run the risk of embarrassing us and declined to take the job. 
He behaved very finely about it. I felt very badly and told 
him so." (Diary, December 12, 1940) This surrender to 
Walsh was a bitter decision; Stimson took great satisfaction 
in Henry Parkman's later distinguished service as an officer 
who rose to the grade of brigadier general, and he was de- 
lighted when Walsh was finally retired from public life by 
another soldier in 1946.- 

In a sense, of course, it was politically unwise for Patterson 
to have appointed Parkman in the first place, but it was this 
kind of political unwisdom that Stimson loved in Patterson; 
his rugged integrity was in the end an asset that far out- 
weighed the occasional difficulties it caused. The real signifi- 
cance of the Parkman case was that it stood almost alone. In 
only one other case throughout the war did Stimson have to 
withdraw an intended appointment to his Department, and in 
this instance the veto came from the President, probably as a 
result of misinformation given him by others. Stimson, how- 
ever, did not go out of his way to appoint the avowed enemies 
of powerful Senators, and in all important cases he cleared 
his appointments with the White House. 

It was Walsh's isolationism that made him dangerous, and 
throughout the war Stimson was to find his principal political 
difficulties with those in both parties whose objective was to 
discredit the administration's foreign policy. Thus his real 
opponents were the President's opponents, too, and his posi- 
tion in this respect was like that of any ordinary Cabinet 
member. With these opponents there could be no real peace 
or mutual trust, but it was important to fight them only on 
the central front. 



340 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The success with which the War Department kept itself 
aloof from politics was strikingly demonstrated much later, 
in 1944, when the Congress entrusted the supervision of voting 
in the armed forces to a three-man commission consisting of 
the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the 
chairman of the Maritime Commission, Admiral Land. Stim- 
son observed with some amusement that two members of the 
original commission were Republicans, while the third was 
a professional sailor. There was a mild flurry at the White 
House over the composition of the staff which Stimson estab- 
lished in the War Department to manage his share of the 
soldier voting; the officer in charge of the work was Colonel 
Robert Cutler, and although he had been politically active 
only as corporation counsel to a Democratic mayor of Boston, 
he was a registered Republican. But Mr. Roosevelt was less 
disturbed than his professional Democratic advisers, and 
Cutler remained on the job, with a Democrat added to his 
staff in order to disarm criticism. Both in the War Ballot 
Commission and in the Army, soldier voting was so smoothly 
and fairly handled that Stimson felt a deep personal debt to 
Cutler. No job entrusted to his supervision during the entire 
war had held more explosive possibilities, and none was ac- 
complished with less friction. 

3, THE BEST STAFF HE EVER HAD 

It is a sound rule for a newcomer in any organization to 
learn his own particular job before he makes much noise. 
Stimson's attention, in the early.summer of 1940, was directed 
mainly at his own Department. There was much to be done. 
The first task, and perhaps the most important, was to restore 
the unity and morale of the Department. The civilian chiefs 
of the service departments, Stimson once remarked, may not 
be able to do very much good, but they certainly have it in 
their power to do a vast deal of harm. They necessarily out- 
rank any and all military men, and when their power is mis- 
used, or when they are at odds with one another, the results 
within the service are distressing. Some such situation seemed 
to have arisen in the months before Stimson's arrival, and his 



CALL TO ARMS 341 

first job was to re-establish a proper mutual confidence be- 
tween the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary, and the Army. 

As for his own relationship to the Army, Stimson could 
only say that the problem never came up. He had the very 
great and unusual advantage of extensive experience with 
military men, and from his first day in office he found no 
cause to complain of any lack of loyal support. In his first 
message to the Army, on July 19, he remarked on the "good 
spirit of co-operation" he had already found, and this was not 
wishful thinking. If the Cabinet had shown him the cordiality 
of sympathetic strangers, the Army seemed to meet him as an 
old friend. To those who disliked soldiers, this friendship 
might give the appearance that one more civilian had been 
captured and tamed by the ferocious militarists. To Stimson 
it was encouraging assurance that an essential condition of 
his effectiveness had been fulfilled. 

Just as important as his own relationship with the Army 
was the development of a staff of assistants who would work 
in the same spirit. The most important single accomplishment 
of Stimson's first year in office was his success in assembling 
a team of civilian associates which he later believed to be the 
best he ever had, in any office. Even if it had been possible to 
make the War Department a one-man show, Stimson's whole 
experience of administration was against such a course. At 
the same time he was not temperamentally fitted for service as 
a figurehead. He therefore required as his principal assistants 
men who could combine intelligence and initiative with flaw- 
less loyalty to him as chief, and such men are more easily 
described than found. During his first months in Washington 
he was greatly helped by Arthur E. Palmer, a young lawyer 
from his New York firm, but Palmer was too young to be 
happy out of uniform, and only Patterson of all his civilian 
assistants was with Stimson from the beginning to the end. 

In accordance with the original understanding between the 
President and Stimson, Patterson was appointed and con- 
firmed as Assistant Secretary of War and was at work by the 
end of July. His arrival ended for good the division between 
the Secretary and the Assistant Secretary which had been 
conspicuous in the early months of 1940. He at once assumed 



342 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

direct responsibility for the vast Army program of procure- 
ment, and throughout the five years that followed he relieved 
Stimson of all but occasional labors in this great field. 

Probably no man in the administration was more ruthlessly 
determined to fulfill his assignment than Patterson; he pro- 
posed to let nothing block him in his effort to equip the armies 
of the anti-Axis world. He had known war at very close range 
in 1918; he was at war from 1940 onward, and he had a fierce 
hatred of all delay and any compromise; his only test of any 
measure was whether it would help to win, and for any group 
or individual who blinked at sacrifice he had only scorn. He 
himself was so zealous to fight that only Stimson's personal 
plea prevented him from resigning his office in 1944 to take 
a commission as an infantry officer again. Patterson was a 
fighter, and although he was perhaps not always perfect in 
his choice of a battleground, his instinct in the choice of 
enemies was unerring. 

The next great find was John J. McCloy, a man whose 
record so distinguished him that Stimson's principal difficulty 
was to retain his services for the War Department. He first 
came to Washington at Stimson's personal request to advise 
the War Department in its counterintelligence work; after 
years of work as a lawyer investigating the Black Tom case 
he had a wide knowledge of German subversive methods. 
Stimson's early high opinion of him was reinforced by every 
report received on his work, and in October, 1940, he was 
appointed as a special assistant. So varied were his labors and 
so catholic his interests that they defy summary. For five years 
McCloy was the man who handled everything that no one 
else happened to be handling. He became Stimson's principal 
adviser in the battle for the Lend-Lease Act and it was his 
skillful preparation that cleared the way for the War Depart- 
ment's successful assumption of the whole military burden of 
lend-lease procurement. Later he was Stimson's chief adviser 
on matters connected with international relations and his 
agent in supervising the great work of military government. 
He was equally good in a complicated interdepartmental ne- 
gotiation or in dealing with Congress. His energy was enor- 
mous, and his optimism almost unquenchable. He became so 



CALL TO ARMS 343 

knowing in the ways of Washington that Stimson sometimes 
wondered whether anyone in the administration ever acted 
without "having a word with McCloy"; when occasionally 
he was the first to give McCloy important news he would re- 
mark that his assistant must be weakening. 

The third of the Secretary's principal subordinates was 
Robert A. Lovett, who arrived in November, 1940, to be 
Stimson's air assistant. For this duty he was conspicuously 
suited. His enthusiasm for airplanes had made him a naval 
pilot of distinguished skill in World War I, and in the years 
between wars he maintained his keen interest in the subject. 
In 1940 when he came to Washington he had just completed, 
as a private citizen, a careful survey of the whole problem of 
air power and aircraft production in the United States. He 
thus brought to his job the understanding and enthusiasm 
which were indispensable to a civilian dealing with the Army 
Air Forces, while at the same time his sensitive intelligence 
enabled him to maintain cordial relations with the non-fliers 
of the Department. Lovett possessed incisive judgment and 
a pertinent wit. He served Stimson in all matters affecting the 
Air Forces as Patterson served in procurement and supply. 
Both were in a high degree autonomous officers; both com- 
bined initiative with loyalty. 

By April, 1941, these three men were in the jobs they were 
to hold throughout the war. In December, 1940, Patterson 
had been appointed to the newly created office of Under Sec- 
retary, and in April McCloy succeeded him as Assistant 
Secretary, while at the same time Lovett was appointed to the 
long-vacant position of Assistant Secretary for Air. 

In the same month Stimson acquired a fourth assistant in 
Harvey H. Bundy, who had served with him before as As- 
sistant Secretary of State from 1931 to 1933. With the title 
of Special Assistant to the Secretary, Bundy became "my 
closest personal assistant." A man of unusual tact and discre- 
tion, Bundy handled many of Stimson's troubling problems 
of administration and correspondence and served as his filter 
for all sorts of men and problems. He also became the Secre- 
tary's personal agent in dealings with scientists and educators, 



344 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

two groups whose importance was as great as it was unfamiliar 
in the great new army of machines and civilian soldiers. 

These four men were the "sixty-minute players" in a team 
to which many others were added for special purposes at dif- 
ferent times. Their characteristics as individuals are perhaps 
less important than the things they had in common. All were 
men in the prime of life, the forties and fifties, but all were 
so much younger than Stimson that none ever called him by 
his first name. All four had been conspicuously successful in 
private life, three as lawyers and one as a banker ; all of them 
came to Washington at serious financial sacrifice. None of 
them had ever been politically active, and none had any con- 
suming political ambition. All four were men of absolute 
integrity, and none was small-minded about credit for his 
labors. All but one were Republicans, but not one of them ever 
aroused partisan opposition. They were civilians, but they 
earned the unreserved confidence of the Army. All of them 
were wholehearted in their loyalty, but none interpreted loy- 
alty as merely a duty to say yes, and Stimson often trusted their 
judgment against his own, especially when he was angry. In 
later chapters their names will be often mentioned, and even 
when they are not mentioned the reader must bear in mind 
that very little of what Stimson did was done without their 
advice and help. 

And with these men Stimson established a relationship that 
was in many ways closer than anything he had known before 
in public office. These were men who knew how to laugh with 
him at trying events; nor were they put off or dismayed by 
his occasional thunderous anger. They could complain about 
him to Mrs. Stimson as a bad-tempered tyrant who "roared 
like a lion," but such complaints were registered in his pres- 
ence with the teasing smile of members of the family. And as 
he looked back in 1947, he felt a deep and affectionate nostal- 
gia for the days when he had shared Patterson's wrath at in- 
competence, laughed at the zealous omniscience of his heav- 
enly twain McCloy and Lovett, fumed at Bundy's constant 
advice not to act on impulse, and lectured them all over the 
interoffice "squawk box" in tones they all proclaimed as un- 
intelligible. 



C H A P T E R XIV 

The First Year 



I. MEN FOR THE NEW ARMY 

DURING the months in which he was feeling his way 
toward full membership in the administration, and 
well before he had obtained the help of most of the civilian 
assistants upon whom he later so heavily relied, Stimson was 
fully engaged in the urgent immediate task of raising an army. 

At New Haven in June, in his talks with the President, 
before his appointment, and at the Senate hearing on his con- 
firmation, he had emphasized his conviction that a selective 
service bill should be enacted at once. Such a bill was pend- 
ing before Congress when he took office, and his energies, 
through July and August of 1940, were largely devoted to the 
struggle for its enactment. 

The principal difficulty was not in the opposition of those 
groups which always oppose conscription but rather in the 
widespread feeling among its supporters that no act so con- 
troversial could be passed in an election year. Even the Army, 
which of course supported the bill as essential to an effective 
mobilization of manpower, was at first pessimistic. The sol- 
diers had been outcasts for so long that they were afraid to 
count on early acceptance of the novel principle of compul- 
sory peacetime service. Nor could they be of any great assist- 
ance in winning support for such a measure; it was better that 
the "militarists" should remain in the background. 

The Burke-Wadsworth Bill was thus not, in its origin, a 
War Department bill, though it was based in large part on joint 
Army-Navy staff studies. It was introduced by two f arsighted 
members of Congress ; it had been framed by a small group of 

345 



346 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

well-informed private citizens in the Military Training 
Camps Association. Without this private initiative, and par- 
ticularly without the indefatigable and intelligent work of 
Grenville Clark, Stimson was convinced that there would 
have been no Selective Service Act in I94O. 1 

Stimson's own principal labors in support of the measure 
were two. First, with General Marshall he determined the 
position of the War Department, which was essentially that 
any workable bill would be satisfactory to the Army. As for 
the necessity of such a bill, the War Department's figures 
spoke for themselves. The Army had in May been authorized 
to expand its regular strength to 375,000. The rate of recruit- 
ing indicated that by the volunteer system even this small 
figure could be achieved only very slowly. If Congress wanted 
an army large enough to defend the country, it must provide 
for compulsory service. This was the lesson of every previous 
emergency in American history. Stimson repeated to the 
House Committee on Military Affairs convictions which he 
had held for over twenty-five years. Selective Service was the 
only fair, efficient, and democratic way to raise an army. 

His second task was that of insuring active Presidential 
support of the bill. Here he found himself engaged in a form 
of sport which had become familiar in the seven years of the 
New Deal. Franklin Roosevelt was firmly convinced of the 
need for selective service, and in the end his support was 
decisive in securing passage of a satisfactory act, but his 
watchful waiting, on this and many other later issues, was as 
tantalizing to Stimson as it was to many other men whose 
policies he in the end supported. In this case, however, 'he 
came down firmly on the right side every time we asked him 
to/ and at least once his statement preceded Stimson's request. 
The effect each time was immediate, and Stimson learned a 
lesson about the power of Mr. Roosevelt's leadership which 
he did not forget. 

With the help of evident public approval throughout the 
country, the supporters of compulsory training were able to 

1 There might also have been no Stimson as Secretary of War in that year; it was 
Clark's fight for Selective Service that led him to take the initiative which resulted in 
the suggestion of Stimson's name to Mr. Roosevelt. 



THE FIRST YEAR 347 

defeat all efforts at delay and all vitiating amendments, and 
on September 16 the President signed the Selective Service 
Act of 1940. In retrospect Stimson saw this act as one of the 
two or three most important accomplishments of the American 
people in the whole period before the outbreak of active war. 
It made possible a program of training which fully occupied 
the Army's resources through the next year; the invaluable 
months before the shooting began were thus not wasted. And 
as an unprecedented departure from American peacetime 
traditions, it demonstrated clearly the readiness of the Amer- 
ican people to pay the cost of defense in terms more signifi- 
cant than dollars. 

Together with the Joint Resolution of August 27, 1940, 
which authorized the President to call out the National 
Guard and the Organized Reserves, the Selective Service Act 
laid the necessary legislative foundation for a new army of 
1,400,000 men. In view of the pressure under which the Army 
was forced to work, its preparations for housing and training 
these men seemed excellent to Stimson, and he said so firmly 
on October 17 when the question appeared briefly in the Pres- 
idential campaign. 

A more difficult task was the organization of the Selective 
Service System. Here, too, the Army was prepared. The re- 
sults of fourteen years of study were incorporated in the De- 
partment's plans, and with the advice of Major Lewis B. 
Hershey, Stimson and the President found it surprisingly easy 
to organize the great machine which was to serve so well for 
the duration. The administration of the draft, from the begin- 
ning, was a triumph of decentralization; throughout the war 
it maintained its reputation for fairness, and this reputation 
rested principally on the character and ability of the thou- 
sands of men who served on the local boards. To Stimson this 
was another proof of the competence of the Army; the meth- 
ods of 1940 were built on the War Department's study of the 
magnificent achievement of General Crowder in 1917. Pres- 
ident Roosevelt insisted on the appointment of a civilian di- 
rector, and after some delay Clarence Dykstra was selected, 
but the success of the draft was not the work of any one man 
it was the natural result of many years of careful thought in 



348 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the War Department. It was a deep personal satisfaction to 
Stimson to watch the President learning that his fears of a 
militaristic administration of the draft were unfounded, and 
the appointment of General Hershey to replace Dykstra when 
the latter resigned in the middle of 1941 seemed to him a 
proper recognition of the trustworthiness of the military. 

The beginning of the draft, for the sixteen million regis- 
trants, was the drawing of numbers on October 29. The same 
occasion marked for Stimson the ending of four months of 
arduous argument and preparation. "We had a very impres- 
sive ceremony. . . . The President first made an admirable 
speech on the purposes and methods and democratic nature of 
the draft. Then I was blindfolded and drew the first cap- 
sule. . . . This drawing took place, as will be noted, before 
election, although everybody was hinting around a little while 
ago that it would not be done until after election. It thus was 
a brave decision on the part of the President to let it come 
now, when there is a very bitter campaign being made against 
it. ... In my opinion he showed good statesmanship when he 
accepted the issue and his technique in bringing it on in this 
public manner and the solemn nature of the occasion and the 
character of the speech which he made . . . served to change 
the event of the draft into a great asset in his favor." (Diary, 
October 29, 1940) 

With manpower for the new army assured, the War De- 
partment tackled the equally important problem of leader- 
ship. It was apparent that large numbers of additional officers 
would be required. 

Where should they be obtained? Grenville Clark, and many 
others who had studied the problem, strongly urged that in 
addition to promotion from the ranks the War Department 
should go straight to the civilian world, organizing training 
camps for citizen volunteers on the lines of those which Stim- 
son himself had so much admired in 1916-1917. This solution 
also appealed to the President, who, however, left the final 
determination to the War Department. 

General Marshall took a different view. Given a Selective 
Service System, he believed that for the first time in its history 



THE FIRST YEAR 349 

the Army would now be in a position to draw its officers from 
its own ranks. With a large pool of National Guard and Re- 
serve officers to draw on, the Army had no immediate need 
for more officers ; its problem was rather to insure the effective 
training of those it had. In March, 1941, the matter came to a 
head. 

The issue here was a broader one than any of the partici- 
pants then realized, and in retrospect Stimson believed that 
the solution reached was a better one than any of them antici- 
pated. After much discussion it was agreed that there should 
be no separate "Plattsburg camps"; the Army would instead 
enlarge its already projected program for training officers 
from the ranks. As a concession to men not yet subject to draft 
who might be particularly qualified as leaders, it would offer 
a special arrangement later known as the Volunteer Officer 
Candidate program, but even this concession was later with- 
drawn. In the great task of finding junior officers the Army 
thus limited itself mainly to its own men, and from this deci- 
sion grew the Officer Candidate Schools. This was the fair 
and democratic way to form an officer corps. It also turned 
out to be the efficient way. 

A Secretary of War does not see much of lieutenants, 
however hard he may try, and Stimson was in no position to 
offer any final judgment on the quality of the junior leaders 
thus developed. The Army's insistence on finding its officers 
among its enlisted men was not duplicated during the war by 
either the Navy or the Air Forces (in the latter case for what 
seemed to Stimson sufficient reasons), and Stimson feared that 
perhaps the Army had lost many fine youngsters who were not 
reluctant to take the short cut to commissioned responsibility 
offered by other services. On the other hand, the principle 
established by the Army was right, and the record of the Offi- 
cer Candidate Schools was a proud one. These schools were 
a new development in American military experience, and 
Stimson did not doubt that many mistakes were made, but he 
felt sure that the Army of the future would build its leader- 
ship on the principles thus boldly and successfully followed 
throughout Word War II. 

Although the Officer Candidate Schools became the source 



350 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of most of the Army's new officers, there were of course many 
specialized skills for which the War Department had to go 
directly to civil life. The most obvious such cases were doc- 
tors, dentists, and chaplains. For other cases, less obvious, 
Stimson on October 14, 1940, laid down his policy in a "mem- 
orandum of suggestions. 77 Commissions direct from civil life 
were not to be given to men otherwise liable to service under 
the draft; "all political or personal considerations should be 
rigidly excluded"; and "commissions should only be given 
where the individual has special qualifications for the service 
he is expected to perform." 

At first Stimson tried to enforce this ruling by requiring his 
personal approval for all appointments from civil life. As the 
Army expanded, such personal supervision became impos- 
sible, and the job was turned over to a board of officers under 
General Malin Craig, who had been Marshall's predecessor 
as Chief of Staff. General Craig's firm but fair-minded appli- 
cation of Stimson's policy was a great protection to the Army. 
War generates many pressures, but perhaps none more insist- 
ent than that of the enormous number of men who are con- 
vinced that they can be useful only as commissioned officers. 

This difficulty of course made itself felt also in lower eche- 
lons. Replying to one eager mother whose favorite private 
soldier had not yet been handed his marshal's baton, Stimson 
remarked that the only course which would satisfy everyone 
would be to abolish the rank of private. 

Quite as important as the procurement of capable junior offi- 
cers was the selection of their seniors. The policy pursued in 
promotion of officers was the work of General Marshall. 
Stimson's only concern was with promotions to general offi- 
cer's rank, and even here the framing of the lists was a job for 
the soldiers. The Secretary was in complete sympathy with 
the Chief of Staff's insistence on selective advancement of the 
ablest men, regardless of age, and after careful study of Mar- 
shall's first list- with his old friend Frank R. McCoy, "We 
both decided that it was an outstanding departmental paper 
and that the recommendations contained in it were very ad- 
mirable and clear. Marshall had had the courage and breadth 
of view to disregard the ordinary official records of officers 



THE FIRST YEAR 351 

in certain cases where it was important to do so, and to appoint 
several men whom McCoy and I knew to be good war men 
and yet who might not have had as good a record on paper." 
(Diary, September 21, 1940) 

Stimson approved the list, and the President signed it, un- 
changed ; this became the almost invariable practice, although 
on a later list, in October, Stimson felt it necessary to reinforce 
Marshall's recommendation for the promotion of George S. 
Patton to major general, having heard that this name was 
doubtfully viewed in the White House. 

The obverse of promotion was the unpleasant task of weed- 
ing out incompetents. At lower echelons this work was slow 
in development; eventually it was handled by reclassification 
boards. Complaints against reclassification from influential 
quarters forced Stimson in 1944 to make a personal investiga- 
tion of the process of reclassification ; he found as he had ex- 
pected that the rights of officers subjected to this process were 
almost too carefully safeguarded and flatly refused to inter- 
vene. At higher levels he followed the same policy, pointing 
out to the friends of officers removed from high positions or 
retired from the Army that any interference from the Secre- 
tary's office would be prejudicial to good order and discipline. 

This firmness was particularly necessary in the case of sen- 
ior officers of the National Guard. Stimson had himself been 
a Guardsman, but partly for that reason he understood how 
little the training of the Guard had equipped many of its offi- 
cers for modern field service, and he therefore fully supported 
General Marshall in the fairly drastic reorganization which 
was required in making effective fighting units of the Guard 
divisions. 

2. SUPPLIES 

The number of men in the United States Government whose 
central interest was preparation for war, in the summer of 
1940, was not very great. Stimson and Judge Patterson 
were two of them, and in the uphill battle which they 
fought for the Army's equipment they soon learned all the 
good reasons why this or that part of their program must be 



352 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

delayed. The basic difficulty was a simple one the country 
as a whole was not ready to make any serious sacrifices for 
national defense; nothing that was done in production before 
Pearl Harbor involved the same degree of sacrifice as the na- 
tion's decision to raise an army by selective service, but each 
man squealed as he was hurt This was true of management 
and of labor, and it was true of many branches of the Govern- 
ment. The tensions developed during the years of the New 
Deal were not the perfect background for the labors of Dr. 
Win-the-War especially since that doctor could not yet be 
called by his right name. The President himself had set the 
tone for this period by a remark that no one need be "discom- 
boomerated" by the crisis. 

The one thing upon which the whole country was agreed 
was that the services must have enough money. At no time in 
the whole period of the war emergency did Stimson ever have 
to worry about funds; the appropriations of Congress were 
always prompt and generous. The pinch came in getting 
money turned into weapons. Right at the start, Stimson found 
his temper sorely tried by six weeks of delay in passing a tax 
law under which contracts could be speedily signed. The issue 
was a simple one. The existing tax laws made no provision for 
the special circumstances of defense production, in which 
large plants must be built which would have almost no value 
after the emergency had ended. No businessman wanted to be 
saddled with such white elephants, and it was generally 
agreed that the law must be changed to permit contractors to 
write off such construction expenses within a five-year period. 
The administration insisted, however, that such relief must be 
accompanied by a stringent excess-profits tax. To all this Stim- 
son agreed, in principle. He was not eager to see business mak- 
ing unnatural profits out of national defense. At the same time 
the essential thing was speed, and while he did not venture to 
determine who was right in the mutual recriminations be- 
tween the Treasury and Congress, it seemed to him clear that 
neither side was sufficiently concerned with getting the bill 
passed. Businessmen must be prevented from making exces- 
sive profits, but they were not going to sign contracts until 
they had a bill protecting them against large losses, and too 



THE FIRST YEAR 353 

many men in Washington refused to face that simple fact. 
"The whole thing is a great clash between two big theories 
and interests. If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare 
for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business 
make money out of the process or business won't work, and 
there are a great many people in Congress who think that they 
can tax business out of all proportion and still have business- 
men work diligently and quickly. That is not human nature." 
(Diary, August 26, 1940) 

The War Department had its troubles with more than one 
company which was slow, or inefficient, or selfish, and Stim- 
son himself had a stiff verbal engagement through the press 
with certain airplane makers who seemed to think the expan- 
sion of civil airlines more important than the growth of the 
Army Air Forces, but on the whole he was not inclined to 
blame businessmen for their reluctance to enter defense work 
without some protection. After World War I he had himself 
defended companies harried by the Harding administration 
for having done in wartime what the Wilson administration 
asked them to do. As for profits, it was obvious that if the gov- 
ernment must guarantee against loss, it must also prevent ex- 
cessive gain, and in the machinery for contract renegotiation 
as it finally developed Stimson was satisfied that in general 
this goal was achieved. 

A striking example of this reluctance of businessmen to 
enter the uncertain field of defense production was the manu- 
facture of powder. In the summer of 1940 powder was the 
most critical shortage of all, but Stimson was forced to make 
personal pleas to such companies as Du Pont before they 
would return to the work they had been so unfairly damned 
for doing in the previous war. One thing was absolutely clear: 
whoever started America toward war in 1940, it was most cer- 
tainly not the munitions makers ; they went about their work 
efficiently when called upon, but they did not push. 

The most difficult problem in production, during Stimson's 
first year in the War Department, was inside the Government, 
in the organization of an effective team of leaders. The War 
Department itself had much to learn; the mixed atmosphere 
of the nation did not permit the application of its carefully 



354 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

deliberated plans for mobilization, and the insistent demand 
was for men who could throw away the book and get results 
in the face of unexpected handicaps and obstacles. Patterson 
was such a man, and so was Colonel Brehon Somervell, who 
in December took charge of the great task of camp construc- 
tion. Stimson was further greatly assisted by Robert Proctor, 
a lawyer from Boston whose volunteer services expedited the 
signing of airplane contracts in the summer of 1940. The reg- 
ular officers charged with procurement were diligent, but too 
few of them were men of drive and imagination. Nothing was 
to be gained by putting unknown hopefuls in their places, 
however, and Stimson and Patterson for a time did their best 
with what they had. For the moment the Army was not the 
critical point in the problem. Even unimaginative officers had 
more demands than industry could fill. The real confusion in 
the Government was in the great field of industrial mobiliza- 
tion. Who was to do the job that had been done under Bernard 
Baruch in 1918? 

Franklin Roosevelt experimented with solutions to this 
problem for nearly four years ; his first effort was the appoint- 
ment of the National Defense Advisory Commission, in June, 
1940. This was a committee of seven. In Stimson's view it was 
just six men too many, but in William S. Knudsen the Presi- 
dent found a man who understood production; from the be- 
ginning Knudsen was "a tower of strength" in the practical 
matter of translating a military demand into an operating 
production line. 

There were other problems involved in industrial mobiliza- 
tion, however, and it was not long before the NDAC began to 
show its inadequacies. Seven advisers could not make deci- 
sions. What was needed was a single head, as Stimson, Knox, 
Patterson, and Forrestal agreed in a long conference on De- 
cember 17. After discussion with Morgenthau and Jesse Jones, 
and after the agreement of both William Green and Sidney 
Hillman had been secured, they went to the President on De- 
cember 1 8 to suggest that Knudsen be made the one responsi- 
ble director of war production. As a concession to the 
President's fear that such a "czar" might trespass on the legit- 
imate functions of the War and Navy Departments, they 



THE FIRST YEAR 355 

further suggested that Stimson and Knox should serve as 
advisers to Knudsen. From this recommendation developed 
the Office of Production Management, OPM, to which the 
President appointed Knudsen as director, Hillman as associ- 
ate director, and Stimson and Knox as members of the board. 
The attempt to get a single head had failed, but the new ar- 
rangement was certainly an improvement. Stimson's major 
contribution to its work was his personal intervention to insure 
the appointment of John Lord O'Brian as general counsel. 
O'Brian held this position in successive reorganizations 
throughout the war, and it would be difficult to overestimate 
the value of his service to his country. 

3. TO BRITAIN ALONE 

However urgent the work of raising and arming her own 
military forces, the attention of America in 1940 and early 
1941 was mainly centered on Great Britain. In Stimson's office 
visitors from England were always welcome, and he followed 
with anxious care the course of the air and sea battle. On two 
matters his informants all agreed. The British were wholly 
determined to fight to the end, and to do it successfully they 
needed all the help they could get. It was the policy of the 
American Government to provide this help, but it was easier 
to announce such a policy than to execute it. 

The main difficulty, of course, was that America simply did 
not have much to give ; by the standards that were to become 
familiar in the later years of the war, she had nothing. In 1940 
planes were counted one at a time, and even the very few on 
hand were not battle-tested. The same thing was true of all 
modern weapons. This brutal fact was too painful to be prop- 
erly accepted, and during the next two years Stimson had 
many a bitter hour with Allied leaders who could not believe 
that the American larder was bare. The President himself 
was an occasional offender ; in his eagerness to help an ally he 
sometimes gave assurances that could not be fulfilled. It was 
not easy for anyone to possess his soul in patience during 
the long months that separated vast programs from finished 
weapons. 



356 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

In 1940 the only weapons available in the United States in 
any quantity were surplus stocks from the last war. Even these 
were not readily transferable, but in the emergency just after 
Dunkirk the President and General Marshall succeeded in 
getting to the British a very substantial number of infantry 
weapons ; this was done by selling them to the United States 
Steel Export Company, which in turn resold them to the Brit- 
ish. The subterfuge was obvious, and unconcealed, but in the 
emotional reaction to the situation in June, 1940, it was gen- 
erally approved. And the weapons were, in fact, surplus 
there remained enough of these old Enfields and outdated 
machine guns to equip an army twice the size of anything con- 
templated in 1940. 

A much more complicated question was presented in early 
August. Ever since May the British had been asking for de- 
stroyers. The American Navy had about two hundred old 
four-stackers in cold storage. They were, however, a part of 
the Navy's wartime force, and if the United States should be 
drawn into the struggle they would certainly be used. To the 
American people, furthermore, ships of the Navy have a spe- 
cial sentimental value. And again, Congress had on June 28 
passed a bill providing that no material belonging to the 
American Government should be delivered to foreign forces 
unless the Army's Chief of Staff or the Chief of Naval Opera- 
tions certified that such material was surplus. It was not read- 
ily apparent how Admiral Stark could give any such certifi- 
cates for his destroyers. Finally, there was an old statute 
apparently forbidding the transfer of naval vessels to a bellig- 
erent. 

The famous "destroyer deal" by which this log jam was 
broken was the personal triumph of President Roosevelt. To 
Stimson this was the President at his best. The obvious answer 
was that the British should give some quid pro quo, and such 
a suggestion was made by the British on August 5. But it was 
the President himself, on August 13, in a meeting with Mor- 
genthau, Stimson, Knox, and Welles, who drafted the essential 
principles of the agreement which was finally reached. In 
return for fifty destroyers, the British were asked to give the 
United States the right to fortify and defend certain British 



THE FIRST YEAR 357 

held bases in the Atlantic. Such a trade would strengthen both 
nations, and in the larger sense each would be further 
strengthened by the increased power of the other. If it was the 
American interest that the British should master the Nazi 
submarine, it was clearly the British interest that America 
should be strong in the Atlantic. 

To the successful completion of the President's plan Stim- 
son gave his full support. He strongly urged that there was 
no need to take the plan to Congress; this was, broadly speak- 
ing, an exercise of the traditional power of the Executive in 
foreign affairs, and it met the requirements of the act of June 
28, for surely Admiral Stark's conscience must be clear as he 
surveyed the stature of American naval strength before and 
after the agreement. As for the statutes on the transfer of naval 
vessels, Stimson endorsed the Attorney General's decision that 
these statutes were designed to meet wholly different circum- 
stances such cases as that of the Alabama, in the Civil War ; 
they would not apply to the present case. Stimson further 
argued against a State Department view that the agreement 
should include a specific pledge not to surrender the British 
Fleet. The Churchill government had already made its posi- 
tion eloquently clear, and to require further pledges would be 
merely an indication of mistrust. As a Republican, Stimson 
was in frequent communication with William Allen White, 
who was finally able to assure him that the Republican candi- 
date, Wendell Willkie, would in general support the plan: 

Not all of the President's advisers were so bold. At a meet- 
ing of these advisers (at which the President was not present) 
on August 21, "there was some timidity evident in regard to 
boldly confronting the situation which existed, and there were 
suggestions from some of them that it would be better to try 
to transfer the destroyers to Canada rather than to Great Brit- 
ain. This suggestion gained enough support to arouse me to 
strongly make a statement to the contrary. I said that no one 
would believe that to be the fact; that it was not fact, and that 
it would simply add a discreditable subterfuge to the situation. 
I pointed out that today the newspapers had been discussing 
the fact that the British fleet of destroyers had already been 
reduced to only sixty vessels and that they had been clamoring 



358 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

for help on this point and that if we should send away from 
this country an almost equal fleet of fifty destroyers which 
would subsequently turn up in Great Britain, no one on earth 
would believe that it had not been intended for Great Britain. 
I pointed out that Canada had neither the need nor the men 
to man them and that they would be manned by British sea- 
men anyhow. My statement put an end to the Canadian sug- 
gestion, but the fact that it should actually have been put for- 
ward was an evidence of how technical stupidity can get into 
these pleasant people.' 7 (Diary, August 21, 1940) 

As announced on September 3, the destroyer deal trans- 
ferred fifty American destroyers to Great Britain, in exchange 
for a ninety-nine-year lease on bases in six British possessions 
in the Western Hemisphere. Two additional leases, in New- 
foundland and Bermuda, were freely granted. This repre- 
sented a concession to the Prime Minister's desire that the 
element of trade be entirely removed from the transaction; 
unfortunately the element of trade was exactly what was nec- 
essary to make the transaction legal under the shackling 
American statutes. The agreement was met with strong and 
general approval by the country; the professional isolationists 
were reduced to unhappy grumbling about "ignoring Con- 
gress," for even on the very narrow ground on which these gen- 
tlemen chose to consider the security of their country, it was 
clear that the President had made a good bargain. 

To Stimson the whole affair was enormously encouraging. 
It was clear proof that the Commander in Chief understood 
high politics; it established a new degree of mutual confi- 
dence and friendship among the British, the Americans, and 
the Canadians ; its solid success at the bar of public opinion 
confirmed his view that the American people were ready for 
leadership. At a meeting with the President and Prime Min- 
ister King of Canada, on August 17, he summed up his feel- 
ings. He reminded the others of Franklin's famous remark at 
the end of the American Constitutional Convention, that for a 
long time he had wondered about a carved image of the sun 
which decorated the chair of George Washington, and that 
now he was persuaded that it was a rising, not a setting, sun. 
"I said I felt that way about this meeting. I felt that it was 



THE FIRST YEAR 359 

very possibly the turning point in the tide of the war, and that 
from now on we could hope for better things." 

Through sheer inadvertence the final agreement, as pub- 
lished, omitted a part of the American obligation 250,000 
Enfield rifles with 30,000,000 rounds of ammunition, and 5 
6-17 bombers. This was highly embarrassing, but Stimson 
could see no other course than a frank admission of the error. 
At a meeting called by the President, "I did my best to point 
out that I felt that we were committed to the British for it, 
and that to go back on that commitment would do a great deal 
of harm to our good name. But the others thought that due 
consideration could be given in the shape of another transac- 
tion which would satisfy the British just as well or better than 
the flying fortresses, and they persuaded the President to that 
effect." (Diary, September 13, 1940) A compensating trans- 
action was finally arranged, but it involved a good deal of 
complicated reasoning, and Stimson was pleasantly surprised 
by the good temper shown by the British in the face of this 
American reluctance to admit publicly a simple error. 

The destroyer deal was heartening and dramatic, but it un- 
fortunately did not end the problem of aid to Britain. 
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1940 Stimson was 
engaged in almost daily labors to speed up the production and 
transfer of military supplies. Energetic efforts were made to 
harmonize British and American requirements and types of 
weapons. British missionaries came in and out of the Secre- 
tary's office, and-over the weeks a close and intelligent co-oper- 
ation developed. The Treasury Department under Morgenthau 
was particularly zealous and effective in finding ways to finance 
these transactions. But more and more both sides found 
themselves blocked. .The British were running out of dollar 
exchange and the hands of the Americans were tied by statute ; 
General Marshall with his usual courage was willing to sign 
the necessary certificate whenever there was any reasonable 
argument to support it, but there were many laws which left 
no such loophole and many cases where no honest man could 
sign. "It is really preposterous to have Congress attempt to tie 
the hands of the Commander in Chief in such petty respects 
as they have done recently in this legislation. The chief hold 



360 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of the Congress on the Executive is their ability to vote or to 
refuse to vote supplies for an Army and their right to raise 
and support armies in the Constitution. The more I run over 
the experiences of this summer, the more I feel that that ought 
to be substantially the only check; that these other little petty 
annoying checks placed upon the Commander in Chief do an 
immense amount more harm than good and they restrict the 
power of the Commander in Chief in ways in which Congress 
cannot possibly wisely interfere. They don't know enough." 
(Diary, September 9, 1940) 

On December 17 the President announced his determina- 
tion to insure all-out aid to Great Britain. On December 29 
he presented his case to the people in the "arsenal of democ- 
racy" speech. At the start of the new session of Congress there 
began the great debate which continued for two months, end- 
ing with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, which gave the 
President the power to "manufacture ... or procure . . . any 
defense article for the government of any country whose de- 
fense the President deems vital to the defense of the United 
States," and "to sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or 
otherwise dispose of, to any such government any defense 
article." In Stimson's view this was one of the most important 
legislative achievements of the entire war. It was another 
great Rooseveltian triumph. At one stroke it smashed two bot- 
tlenecks: It provided for the financing of the British supply 
program, and at the same time it gave to the American Gov- 
ernment badly needed authority over the whole field of mili- 
tary supplies. It was also a firm declaration of the American 
intention to block the Nazis; Stimson called it a "declaration 
of economic war." 

Unlike the Selective Service Act, Lend-Lease was in its 
concept and origin a specifically "administration" measure; it 
was as members of a united team that the Administration 
leaders most closely concerned planned their statements to the 
congressional committees considering the bill. Leaving finance 
to Morgenthau and foreign policy to Hull, Stimson, as head 
of the department which would be most directly affected in 
the execution of any lend-lease program, centered his argu- 



THE FIRST YEAR 361 

meat on the practical benefits which would result from pas- 
sage of the bill. 

In prolonged sessions with the House and Senate commit- 
tees he emphasized that the bill would bring order out of the 
chaos then surrounding the procurement of munitions for 
friendly nations. For a dozen different purchasing missions of 
varying types and sizes it would substitute the trained and ex- 
perienced military procurement officers of the United States 
Government. More important, it would permit the American 
Government to exercise a centralized and effective control 
over the distribution of weapons produced in the United 
States, for all such weapons would remain in American hands 
until they were complete and ready to use. There would be 
none of the difficulty previously caused by the fact that the 
same factory often was at work on orders for two or more in- 
dependent governments. 

Most important of all, Lend-Lease was a delegation of 
power, in the great tradition, to the one man to whom power 
must always be given in a national emergency the President. 
Here Stimson clashed head on with more than one member of 
his own party, for the Republicans had taken up the chant of 
"dictatorship." Over and over again he emphasized his con- 
viction that the only sound general principle was to trust the 
President. "My opinion and it is one of long standing, and it 
has come from observation of various men who have held the 
Presidency during the period of my lifetime, whom I have 
had the privilege and the honor of observing at close range 
my opinion is this: I have been impressed always with the 
tremendously sobering influence that the terrific responsibility 
of the Presidency will impose upon any man, and particularly 
in foreign relations. . . . That has applied to all of the gentle- 
men whom ... I have had the opportunity of observing 
closely. . . t I feel that there is no one else, no other possible 
person in any official position who can be trusted to make con- 
servatively and cautiously such a tremendous decision as the 
decisions which would have to be made in a great emergency 
involving a possible war. . . ." 2 

2 Hearings on HR 1776, before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, January 



362 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Five times in the winter of 1941 Stimson went to Capitol 
Hill to testify in support of the Lend-Lease Act and its first 
appropriation bilL Five times he found himself involved in 
warm debate with men who feared the policy proposed and 
hated its proposer, Mr. Roosevelt. Each time he listened to 
another set of questions from the well-worn grab bag of isola- 
tionism ; he had heard them all six months before when he first 
came to Washington. The answers were still the same. Yes, 
the United States was in peril ; no, he did not think the Presi- 
dent was likely to give our Navy away; yes, the Government 
would administer the act with due regard for the defense of 
the United States ; the whole proposal was in fact designed to 
do nothing else than improve the security of the United 
States; no, he did not think it was a breach of neutrality; 
there was no obligation to be neutral in the face of aggression. 
It makes a weary tale in the retelling, but the questions were 
pointed, and so were the answers. Everything that Stimson 
had said before about the nature of the world crisis he now 
said again. And each day as he came away worn by the effort 
of debate he was heartened by the thought that this was a 
worth-while battle. 

The Lend-Lease Act, substantially unweakened by amend- 
ment, was signed by the President on March n, 1941. Con- 
gress retained the two controls appropriate to the legislative 
branch it reserved the right of appropriation for the pro- 
gram, and it required regular reports. The first seven billions 
were appropriated shortly after. The administration had 
made its preparations, and the first supplies were transferred 
on the same day the bill was passed. Thus the War Depart- 
ment, "in addition to its other duties," became a service of 
supply to Allied armies everywhere. After the first labors of 
organization were complete, Stimson turned the job over to 
Under Secretary Patterson, and the work went ahead like any 
other program of procurement. 

The great labors performed in the administration of Lend- 
Lease are no part of Stimson's life, and although he came 
frequently in contact with broad problems of allocation of 
weapons, this responsibility too was generally in other hands. 
Throughout the war he never wavered in his belief that the 



THE FIRST YEAR 363 

act was a constantly growing force for victory, and in its con- 
tinued success he read a solid confirmation of his claim that 
the wise law is the law which gives power to the Executive. 
At his flexible discretion the President was able to direct 
where it was most needed the output of the "arsenal of democ- 
racy." 

As the years passed, the Lend-Lease Act increased in favor 
in the eyes of Congress. Three times in the war Stimson went 
up to the Capitol to express his firm conviction that the act 
should be continued. Each time he found a milder and more 
friendly audience, until in 1945 he felt as if he must have come 
to his own funeral, so generous were the praises lavished on 
his "judgment" and "leadership" four years back. And for his 
part, as the years passed and the act was constantly renewed, 
he felt no anger or surprise that he had been so sharply 
quizzed in 1941. For truly this was a new departure, and in 
the broad view it was not the fight over the Lend-Lease Act 
but its eventual successful passage that deserved to be remem- 
bered in the record of the Seventy-seventh Congress. 



CHAPTER XV 

Valley of Doubt 



I. A DIFFERENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT 

THE Roosevelt administration in 1941 "was conducting a 
struggle on two great fronts. One was the crisis in Europe, 
with its looming counterpart in .the Far East; the other was 
the battleground of American opinion. During the months 
that followed the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, the tactics 
of combat on this second battleground became a point of sig- 
nificant divergence between Stimson and his chief. 

To the President and all his leading advisers it was clear 
that the United States must take an ever increasing part in the 
resistance of the world against German and Japanese aggres- 
sion. This could only be done with the approval and support 
of the bulk of the nation, and perhaps no nation of basically 
sound spirit has ever been more at a disadvantage in adjusting 
its thinking to a great crisis than the United States before 
Pearl Harbor. For the cheap and unworthy beliefs into which 
it was beguiled in the years between 1918 and 1939 the coun- 
try paid a great penalty, and the full price has perhaps not 
even yet been exacted. For twenty years the people of the 
United States had turned their backs to the rest of the world ; 
complacently they had listened to those who argued that their 
country could be an island to itself ; by an overwhelming ma- 
jority they had enforced a policy of isolation; it was their 
pressure that had produced legislation designed on the extraor- 
dinary theory that a single nation can keep itself out of war 
by passing laws. As the storm began to rise in 1931, Americans 
were indignant, as any decent people must be when they see 
aggression; they were indignant and inactive. Even in 1939 

364 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 365 

most of them believed that this war was not theirs. It is there- 
fore not strange that in 1940 and 1941 the nation, turning at 
last to face the facts of life with action, kept thinking in terms 
of "measures short of war." 

American thinking was thus confused, but Americans have 
no cause to be ashamed of the basic reason for the confusion, 
which was nothing more nor less than their hatred of war. 
Many much less noble feelings were involved in the complex 
emotional reaction called isolationism, but the ordinary Amer- 
ican, the man in the great majority who detested the Nazi sys- 
tem and devoutly hoped for its defeat, held back from urging 
full participation in the struggle for the simple reason that he 
hated war. It was to this decent feeling that the more rabid 
isolationist leaders made indecent appeals, and to this decent 
feeling President Roosevelt deferred in constantly asserting 
that he was not advocating war, nor leading his country into 
an inevitable conflict. 

Perhaps no public figure in the country had a clearer record 
of opposition to the whole cast of thinking that dominated the 
country between the two world wars than Stimson. He con- 
stantly denied that war could be avoided by isolation, and never 
doubted that the final issue of policy was always one of right 
and wrong, not peace and war. Yet even Stimson did not pub- 
licly preach to the American people the necessity of fighting; 
any such outright appeal would at once have lost him his 
hearers; always his statements were framed to preach rather 
the absolute necessity of preventing a Nazi triumph. Although 
constantly pressed for such an admission by isolationist mem- 
bers of Congress, Stimson never allowed himself to say that 
the final result of President Roosevelt's policy would be war. 

When he first took office in 1940, and for several months 
afterward, Stimson himself did not honestly believe that war 
was the probable immediate outcome of the policy of helping 
the British. A declaration of war was certainly not imminent, 
nor even remotely possible in view of the temper of the people 
at the time. And of course the country had almost no weapons 
or troops. As he gradually became convinced that war was 
inevitable, he was bound to silence by the requirement of 
loyalty to his chief. 



366 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

It was after the election, as the year was ending, that Stim- 
son first noted in his diary his feeling that in the end the 
United States must fight. On December 16 after a meeting 
with Knox, General Marshall, and Admiral Stark he noted 
that "there was a basic agreement among us all. That in itself 
was very encouraging. All four agreed that this emergency 
could hardly be passed over without this country being drawn 
into the war eventually." (Diary, December 16, 1940) This 
belief Stimson continued to hold, ever more strongly, for the 
next twelve months. But in this period his thinking passed 
through several distinct stages. 

In the first stage, which lasted more or less through the 
passage of the Lend-Lease Act, he believed that the President 
was leading the country into active measures just as fast as it 
was willing to go. He fully approved of the President's radio 
address of December 29, in which Mr. Roosevelt made en- 
tirely clear his decision not to permit the defeat of Great 
Britain. 

Although Stimson felt certain that young Americans would 
not permanently be willing to remain "toolmakers for other 
nations which fight" when they had once appreciated the issue 
"between right and wrong/' he admitted that the time was 
not ripe for the final step. "That cannot yet be broached but 
it will come in time I feel certain and the President went as 
far as he could at the present time." (Diary, December 29, 
1940) 

The second stage of Stimson's thinking is more compli- 
cated; it lasted from April, 1941, until the autumn. During 
this period it was his strong belief that the situation required 
more energetic and explicit leadership than President Roose- 
velt considered wise. There were two central reasons for this 
feeling. First, he was convinced that if the policy of sustaining 
Great Britain was to succeed, America must throw the major 
part of her naval strength into the Atlantic battle. There was 
no other way to insure the safe delivery of the lend-lease sup- 
plies which the nation had decided to send to the British; 
second, Stimson's whole concept of the duty of the Chief Ex- 
ecutive centered on his obligation to act as the leader, and not 
merely the representative, of public opinion. Of the power of 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 367 

forthright leadership he had a higher opinion than the Presi- 
dent. It will be helpful to consider each of these points in some 
detail. 

The winter of 1940-1941 was a period of relative quiet in 
the European war; the principal objective of both sides was 
to prepare for the great campaigns anticipated in the follow- 
ing spring and summer. It was expected by the British and 
American leaders that Hitler would then make a final great 
effort to cdnquer the British Isles. Accordingly their major 
purpose was to insure the defense of the British home islands. 
The bulk of the burden fell to the British themselves; the task 
of the Americans was to help insure the safe delivery of a 
maximum volume of supplies of all kinds. But the constantly 
increasing rate of successful submarine attacks made it seem 
clear to Stimson, Marshall, and Knox, even in December, that 
the Royal Navy must have the assistance of American naval 
units in defending the Atlantic highway. No halfway measures 
would do. On December 19, "we had about the longest [Cab- 
inet] meeting yet. The President brought up the question of 
the sinkings on the oceans of the traffic with Great Britain. 
The list of these sinkings is terrific, over four million tons so 
far a terrific loss to civilization and to commerce, all over 
the world and it is now very clear that England will not be 
able to hold out very much longer against it unless some de- 
fense is found. The President discussed various measures of 
getting new ships, taking the ships that were interned belong- 
ing to foreign nations on one side building new ones on the 
other. I finally told him the story of my leaky bathtub ... I 
told him that I thought it was a pretty high price to put so 
much new water into the bathtub instead of plugging the leaks, 
meaning by that that I thought we ought to forcibly stop the 
German submarines by our intervention. Well, he said he 
hadn't quite reached that yet." (Diary, December 19, 1940) 

Through the winter Stimson's belief in the need for convoys 
grew constantly stronger, as did that of his military advisers 
and of the Navy Department. Toward the end of March, in 
a meeting with Knox, "We both agreed that the crisis is com- 
ing very soon and that convoying is the only solution and that 
it must come practically at once." (Diary, March 24, 1941) 



368 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

The following day a meeting was held with the senior British 
officers in Washington. "They agreed, each one of them, that 
they could not, with present naval forces, assume the entire 
escort duty that is required to protect the convoys of munitions 
to Great Britain." (Diary, March 25, 1941) 

The President was not less aware than Stimson and Knox 
of the vital importance of assisting the British in the Atlantic, 
but his approach to the problem was different. April 10 "was 
a very long day, mostly spent at the White House. . . . The 
President had evidently been thinking out things as far as he 
could to see how far he could go toward the direction [of] 
protection of the British Transport line. He made up his mind 
that it was too dangerous to ask the Congress for the power to 
convoy. He thought that if such a resolution was pressed now 
it would probably be defeated. On this point I am rather in- 
clined to differ with him, provided that he took the lead vig- 
orously and showed the reasons for it. Nevertheless, he had 
made a decision and it was an honest one. Therefore he is try- 
ing to see how far over in the direction of Great Britain we 
could get and how would be the best way to do it. We had the 
atlas out and by drawing a line midway between the western- 
most bulge of Africa and the easternmost bulge of Brazil, we 
found that the median line between the two continents was at 
about longitude line 25. . . . His plan is then that we shall 
patrol the high seas west of this median line, all the way down 
as far as we can furnish the force to do it, and that the British 
will swing their convoys over westward to the west side of this 
line, so that they will be within our area. Then by the use of 
patrol planes and patrol vessels we can patrol and follow the 
convoys and notify them of any German raiders or German 
submarines that we may see and give them a chance to escape." 
(Diary, April 10, 1941) 

When it came to the announcement of this patrol system, 
the President, in agreement with the majority of the Cabinet, 
chose to portray it as a principally defensive move. In a con- 
ference with Stimson and Knox on April 24, "He kept revert- 
ing to the fact that the force in the Atlantic was merely going 
to be a patrol to watch for any aggressor and to report that to 
America. I answered there, with a smile on my face, saying, 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 369 

'But you are not going to report the presence of the German 
Fleet to the Americas. You are going to report it to the British 
Fleet.' I wanted him to be honest with himself. To me it seems 
a clearly hostile act to the Germans, and I am prepared to take 
the responsibility of it. He seems to be trying to hide it into the 
character of a purely reconnaissance action which it really is 
not." (Diary, April 24, 1941) 

The patrol system proved no final answer to the require- 
ments of the Atlantic, and gradually through the summer and 
autumn the President was driven to continuously stronger 
measures, acting each time considerably later than Stimson 
thought right. This divergence between the President and his 
Secretary of War on the method of entering the Atlantic con- 
test is a clear specific instance of their general disagreement 
on the second great issue that occupied Stimson's mind at the 
time: the President's duty to lead. 

Stimson had the highest respect for Franklin Roosevelt's 
political acumen, and at no time was he prepared to assert 
categorically that the President's method was wrong; all he 
could say was that it was emphatically not the method he him- 
self would have chosen, and that in his opinion the President 
would have been an even greater politician if he had been a 
less artful one. This difference between the two men was basic 
to their natures. In this particular instance it will perhaps 
never be possible to say with certainty which was right; our 
task here is merely to present the issue as Stimson saw it. 

The central point was stated to the President by Stimson in 
a private meeting on April 22. "I warned him in the begin- 
ning that I was going to speak very frankly and I hoped that 
he wouldn't feel that I did not have the real loyalty and affec- 
tion for him that I did have. He reassured me on that point 
and then I went over the whole situation of the deterioration 
in the American political situation toward the war that has 
taken place since nothing happened immediately after the 
[Lend-Lease] victory. I cautioned him on the necessity of his 
taking the lead and that without a lead on his part it was use- 
less to expect the people would voluntarily take the initiative 
in letting him know whether or not they would follow him if 
he did take the lead." (Diary, April 22, 1941) 



370 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

Stimson was certain that if the President were himself to go 
to the country and say frankly that force was needed and he 
wanted the country's approval in using it, he would be sup- 
ported. In contrast to this policy, the President's method 
seemed to him to be one of cautious waiting for circumstance 
to get the fight started for him. The President was determined 
to avoid a setback at the hands of the isolationists, and he 
seriously feared that any overboldness on his part would lead 
to such a defeat. 

On May 6 Stimson delivered a radio address, the text of 
which had been seen and passed by the President, expressing 
his own general view of the crisis, so far as loyalty to the Pres- 
ident permitted. He came out flatly for active naval assistance 
to the'British, pointing out that any other course would mean 
the annulment of the objectives of the Lend-Lease Act. And 
in the last two paragraphs he stated as clearly as he dared his 
conviction that war was coming. 

". . . I am not one of those who think that the priceless free- 
dom of our country can be saved without sacrifice. It can not. 
That has not been the way by which during millions of years 
humanity has slowly and painfully toiled upwards towards a 
better and more humane civilization. The men who suffered 
at Valley Forge and won at Yorktown gave more than money 
to the cause of freedom. 

"Today a small group of evil leaders have taught the young 
men of Germany that the freedom of other men and nations 
must be destroyed. Today those young men are ready to die 
for that perverted conviction. Unless we on our side are ready 
to sacrifice and, if need be, die for the conviction that the free- 
dom of America must be saved, it will not be saved. Only by 
a readiness for the same sacrifice can that freedom be pre- 
served." 

There was no bitterness in Stimson's disagreement with the 
President. One day at a Cabinet meeting, "the President talked 
a little about his program of patrol and what he was planning 
to do, ... and after narrating what had been done he said, 
Well, it's a step forward.' I at once said to him, 'Well, I hope 
you will keep on walking, Mr. President. Keep on walking.' 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 371 

The whole Cabinet burst into a roar of laughter which was 
joined in by the President." (Diary, April 25, 1941) 

Although it was one of the strongest, along with a speech 
by Secretary Knox, Stimson's speech of May 6 was only one 
of many by administration leaders in this period. Stimson was 
interested to discover that he and Knox were not the only 
members of the Cabinet who were disturbed at the President's 
apparent failure to f ollow up more rapidly his victory in the 
Lend-Lease Act. Jackson and Ickes were also worried. The 
President had his more cautious advisers, however, notably in 
the State Department. In Mr. Roosevelt's preparations for 
his own radio speech of May 27, he faced the contrasting ad- 
vice of two camps, and although the final speech was much 
stronger than Stimson had feared it might be, it was not nearly 
so strong as he had hoped. The President firmly asserted the 
doctrine of the freedom of the seas, and made it clear that he 
intended to use "all additional measures necessary" to assure 
the delivery of supplies to Great Britain. He also declared an 
"unlimited national emergency," thus giving the administra- 
tion somewhat broader powers in dealing with the crisis. But 
when, on the following day in his press conference, he allowed 
himself to say that this bold and vigorous speech did not mean 
that he planned to institute convoys, Stimson was deeply dis- 
couraged. He had himself urged a very different course; in 
a letter of May 24 to the President he had suggested that the 
President ask Congress for power "to use naval, air, and mili- 
tary forces of the United States" in the Atlantic battle. 

Throughout June Stimson's anxiety increased, and in the 
first few days of July it reached its climax. On July 2 he made 
his only wholly pessimistic diary entry in five years. The Nazi 
attack on Russia had begun and was going altogether too 
well; meanwhile America seemed to have lost her way. "Al- 
together, tonight I feel more up against it than ever before. 
It is a problem whether this country has it in itself to meet 
such an emergency. Whether we are really powerful enough 
and sincere enough and devoted enough to meet the Germans 
is getting to be more and more of a real problem." (Diary, 
July 2, 1941) 



372 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

The next day he wrote the following letter and memoran- 
dum to the President, who at the time was considering his 
message to Congress on the occupation of Iceland. 



July 3, 1941 
My Dear Mr. President: 

My thoughts are deeply with you during these critical days. 
When the time comes for you to speak, my view is that you 
should speak to the Congress not by message but face to face 
and do it with personal and disarming frankness. You are 
such a master of such intercourse that I hesitate even to sug- 
gest the points that you should cover. 

The main thing it seems to me is to point out how you have 
done your best to serve the cause of peace and how events 
have proved too strong for you. That in my opinion is the most 
appealing and persuasive line and the one which will produce 
the following of the whole nation. It is the course which all of 
your constituents have themselves been obliged to follow. 

I enclose merely a memorandum of some of the points to 
be covered, making no attempt at phraseology. 

Faithfully yours, 

HENRY L. STIMSON 
The President, 
Hyde Park, New York 



MEMORANDUM FOR ADDRESS TO CONGRESS 

"I have sincerely hoped that we should not be drawn into 
this war. I have earnestly tried to avoid the use of force. I 
have labored with all my strength to secure a national defense, 
both naval and military, for this nation which would be suffi- 
cient to protect it when fighting alone against any combination 
of nations that might attack it. But my hope is becoming dim. 
The effort to avoid the use of force is proving ineffective. Our 
national defense is as yet far from complete. It has now be- 
come abundantly clear that, unless we add our every effort, 
physical and spiritual as well as material, to the efforts of 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 373 

those free nations who are still fighting for freedom in this 
world, we shall ourselves be brought to a situation where we 
shall be fighting alone at an enormously greater danger than 
we should encounter today with their aid." 

The attitude suggested in this memorandum was rejected by 
the President, although the advice of such men as Stimson 
and Hopkins was again effective in offsetting more cautious 
counsel from other sources. In a meeting at the White House 
on July 6, Stimson told the President's advisers that "the 
President must be frank. Whether or not he was going to ask 
the Congress for action, he must in any event tell them exactly 
what he is doing and what he intends to do." (Diary, July 6, 
1941) The President's message of July 7 did at least frankly 
state that he had moved American forces into Iceland and 
proposed to defend the sea communications between the 
United States and that island. In comparison with Stimson's 
own long draft, prepared on July 5 at Mr. Roosevelt's request, 
the President's message lacked emphasis on the central and 
controlling fact that Iceland was important principally as a 
way station on the North Atlantic route from America to 
Great Britain. It also omitted any intimation of war as im- 
minent. The President was still content to build his case 
mainly on the defense of the Western Hemisphere, believing 
that this was a more palatable argument to the people, and 
one less subject to violent attack from the isolationists. 

This effort in July was Stimson's last active attempt to bring 
the President to his way of thinking. It was clear that Mr. 
Roosevelt did not agree with him, and Stimson was inclined 
to believe after July that the President was so far committed 
to his own more gradual course that nothing could change 
him. 

Moreover, as the summer wore on, the kind of lifting 
leadership which Stimson desired became less possible. 'The 
chance for a trumpet call for a battle to save freedom through- 
out the world had been sunk in a quibble over the extent of 
defense and the limits of the Western Hemisphere.' Mean- 
while, what words might have accomplished earlier was being 
achieved by events; one of our patrolling destroyers was at- 



374 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tacked, and the President publicly announced that the fleet 
would shoot on sight Axis vessels in the western Atlantic. 
While the President accomplished his object of having the 
war come to him, it should be observed that by this policy he 
in effect surrendered the initiative to the -Nazis. By waiting 
for Nazi attacks on American vessels the President left it to 
them to choose their time to fight. 

Looking back on this period Stimson could not avoid a 
comparison between Franklin Roosevelt and his distinguished 
cousin Theodore. From what he knew of both men, he was 
forced to believe that in the crisis of 1941 T.R. would have 
done a better and more clean-cut job than was actually done. 
Equally with his cousin he would have appreciated the true 
meaning of the Nazi threat, and there can be no higher praise, 
for no statesman in the world saw and described the Nazi 
menace more truly than Franklin Roosevelt. T.R.'s advantage 
would have been in his natural boldness, his firm conviction 
that where he led, men would follow. He would, Stimson felt 
sure, have been able to brush aside the contemptible little 
group of men who wailed of "warmongers," and in the blunt 
strokes of a poster painter he would have demonstrated the 
duty of Americans in a world issue. Franklin Roosevelt was 
not made that way. With unequaled political skill he could 
pave the way for any given specific step, but in so doing he was 
likely to tie his own hands for the future, using honeyed and 
consoling words that would return to plague him later. 

The frame of mind of the American people under this 
treatment was graphically shown in a Gallup Poll at the end 
of April, 1941. To three questions the public gave three re- 
markable answers. Of those expressing an opinion, ( i ) nearly 
three-fourths would favor entering the war "if it appeared 
certain that there was no other way to defeat Germany and 
Italy," (2) four-fifths thought the United States would sooner 
or later enter the war, (3) four-fifths were opposed to im- 
mediate entry into the war. 

The most striking fact about this result was that in the 
considered view of the leaders of the American Government, 
and also by facts publicly known, it was already clear that 
"there was no other way to defeat Germany and Italy" than 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 375 

by American entry into the war. The trouble was that no one 
in authority had said so. 

In Stimson's view these answers exactly reflected the leader- 
ship of the President. The first answer showed how far he and 
others had succeeded in giving the American people a clear 
understanding of the fascist danger. The second answer re- 
flected a somewhat fatalistic expectation that just as America 
had participated in every general European conflict for over 
two hundred years, she would probably get into this one too. 
The third answer, showing opposition to immediate entry, 
was the direct result of the fact that no responsible leader, and 
particularly not the President, had explicitly stated that that 
was necessary; on the contrary, the President in particular 
had repeatedly said that it was not necessary. 

To Stimson it always seemed that the President directed 
his arguments altogether too much toward his vocal but small 
isolationist opposition, and not toward the people as a whole. 
By his continuous assertion that war was not a likely result of 
his policy, he permitted the American people to think them- 
selves into a self-contradictory frame of mind. As Stimson 
constantly pointed out at the time, only the President could 
take the lead in a warlike policy. Only he had the right and 
duty to lead his people in this issue. 

If Mr. Roosevelt had been himself a believer in neutrality, 
as McKinley had been in 1898 or Wilson for so long in 1916, 
it would have been natural that effective pressure for action 
should develop in private places. But as the proclaimed and 
acknowledged champion of the anti-Axis cause, he was neces- 
sarily its spearhead in policy, and without word from him the 
American people could not be expected to consider all-out 
action necessary. 

There are those who will maintain that this explanation of 
Stimson's feelings merely confirms their view that Franklin 
Roosevelt dishonestly pulled the American people into a war 
they never should have fought. 1 Nothing could be farther 
from Stimson's own position, and it should be emphasized 
that if this charge is to be leveled against Mr. Roosevelt, it 

1 Quite aside from all other evidence, any argument that the American people were 
duped is of course wholly refuted by the Gallup Poll quoted above. 



376 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

must in some degree be leveled at Stimson too. For the differ- 
ence of policy between him and the President was one of 
degree, not of kind. Stimson saw war coming in December, 
1940; it was not until April, 1941, that he began to feel that 
the President could successfully preach war to the people 
there are always times, in politics, when it is impossible to 
speak with entire frankness about the future, as all but the 
most self-righteous will admit. The essential difference be- 
tween Stimson and the President <was in the value they set on 
candor as a political weapon. And as Stimson himself fully 
recognized, it was a good deal easier to advocate his policy, 
as Secretary of War, than to carry it out, as President. Cer- 
tainly the consequences of failure in a bold course would have 
been extremely serious no one can say whether the United 
States could have surmounted the reaction in feeling which 
would have set in if any proposal by the President had been 
roundly beaten in Congress or thoroughly disapproved by the 
people. On the other hand, it was equally true that the impasse 
into which America had thought herself in 1941 might have 
continued indefinitely if that had been the will of the Axis, 
and if this had happened, the President would have had to 
shoulder a large share of the blame. It did not happen, and 
all that America lost by her failure to enter the war earlier 
was time. But time in war means treasure and lives, and 
through the summer of 1941 Stimson was constantly faced 
with concrete examples of the losses incurred by delay. 

2. THE PRICE OF INDECISION 

The Secretary of War was not the only one who suffered 
from the difficulties of the strange condition, neither peaceful 
nor wholly warlike, in which the United States found herself 
in the latter half of 1941. The entire Army suffered, and it 
was not surprising that during those months there was a prob- 
lem of "morale" among the troops. The men drafted in the 
first year of Selective Service faced many discouragements 
that the later millions did not know in nearly the same degree. 
Equipment was extremely scanty, and training programs were 
incomplete. But most of all, the new Army faced the problem 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 377 

that no one could tell it in clear and compelling terms exactly 
what it was training for, and the bulk of the selectees came to 
regard their year of service as something to be finished as 
quickly and painlessly as possible. The act required that they 
train for twelve months ; they would do it, and then go home. 

Probably no obviously necessary measure ever passed Con- 
gress by so close a margin as the bill to extend the term of 
service for selectees which was enacted in August, 1941. When 
Stimson first discussed this bill with leaders of Congress, they 
were almost unanimous in their assertion that it could never 
pass. They turned out to be wrong, by a margin of one vote ; 
for this the country could thank George Marshall, who under- 
took the main burden of advocating and explaining the bill. 
Without it, the Army would by December 7 have been largely 
disorganized by discharges and plans for discharges the 
meaning of such a disorganization can best be understood by 
recalling what happened to the American Army when it 
began to restore its soldiers to civilian life in 1945. 

What made this measure so distasteful to Congressmen was 
that it seemed to involve an unexpected change in a contract 
between the selectees and the government. The original act 
clearly stated that the twelve-month term of service could be 
extended "whenever the Congress has declared that the na- 
tional interest is imperiled," but this clause had not been 
emphasized at the time, and Congressmen did not wish to take 
the onus of making the required declaration. In fact many of 
them hoped by inaction to force the President to do by trick- 
ery what they themselves refused to do openly. On August 7, 
Representative Walter G. Andrews, of New York, came to 
see Stimson. Andrews, "a very good man," and a supporter of 
the bill for extension, "fished out an opinion which he said 
the opponents were relying on which held that technically, 
although not morally, the President would have the power to 
extend the term of service of each man himself after his one 
year expired by passing him into the Reserve and then calling 
him out from the Reserve. This is one of those finespun tech- 
nical interpretations which possibly is legally correct (I think 
I can say probably) and yet which is contrary to the intention 
of the Congress at the time when the statutes last summer were 



378 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

made and I am sure it would arouse great resentment against 
the President if he followed that. Yet that is just what these 
cowards in the Congress are trying to do. They want to avoid 
the responsibility themselves . . . and to throw it on the Pres- 
ident and then, if he should take this interpretation, they 
would be the first ones to jump on him as violating the real 
purpose of the law." (Diary, August 7, 1941) Stimson him- 
self had felt on several occasions that Mr. Roosevelt might 
well be more frank with Congress than he was, but certainly 
in the face of this sort of pusillanimous hostility it was not 
easy for the President to be trustful. 

The battle over this bill involved Stimson in a particularly 
unpleasant clash with Senator Burton K. Wheeler, the man 
who had described the Lend-Lease Act as a measure designed 
to plow under every fourth American boy. Under Wheeler's 
frank, a million antiwar postcards were sent out in July, con- 
taining material designed to show the folly of the President's 
policy. Some of these cards were delivered to soldiers, and in 
their anger Stimson and the President decided that the former 
should make a strong statement. Stimson told his press con- 
ference that "this comes very near the line of subversive ac- 
tivities against the United States if not treason." To this 
accusation Wheeler hotly replied, and he was able to demon- 
strate that no copies of his card had been sent intentionally to 
any soldiers. Against the advice of most of his staff Stimson 
decided to apologize. It was not a pleasant decision, for the 
extraordinary bitterness of Wheeler's whole course in 1941 
had reached one of its highest points in his attack on Stimson. 
After making the apology "my mind felt very much better," 
and the surprised and friendly reaction to his statement in the 
press confirmed his feeling that he had done the right thing. 
Even Wheeler seemed to think the apology creditable. 

As finally passed, the Draft Extension Act provided for 
the retention in service of all selectees, National Guardsmen, 
and Reserves for an additional period of not more than eight- 
een months beyond the year originally specified. On August 
15, the day after its passage, Stimson delivered a radio address 
to the Army in an effort to explain the reasons for the bill. So 
far as he could, he rehearsed the nature of the danger facing 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 379 

the country. As it was still th.e government's policy to discuss 
the peril in terms of defense, his speech was probably not very 
effective in its purpose, and although it was sound enough, 
Stimson thought it "poor" and "defensive" when he read it 
over after the war. But in 1941 nothing short of a radical 
change in the country's thinking could fully have reconciled 
drafted soldiers to an extension of their term of involuntary 
service. The reports of low morale were disturbing, but the 
root of the difficulty could not be removed by any action of 
the War Department. "The trouble has come from the fact 
that we have [been] trying to train an army for war without 
any declaration of war by Congress and with the country not 
facing the danger before it." (Diary, September 15, 1941) 

The aspect of morale usually regarded by the public as most 
important was the provision of adequate facilities for the 
relaxation and recreation of the soldier off duty. The impor- 
tance of this undertaking Stimson never denied, and particu- 
larly in 1941, while the country was at peace, he pressed for 
speed and co-ordination in its handling. In Frederick Osborn 
he found an able and imaginative administrator for these 
matters, and Osborn's services to the Army constantly 
expanded in scope throughout the war. But nothing in Stim- 
son's nature or experience led him to believe that the morale 
of an army could be measured by the number of its recreation 
halls and canteens. In his report for 1941 to the President he 
called attention to this curious but widely held delusion, 
which seemed to him wholly at variance with the best Ameri- 
can tradition. ". . . At the same time that we leave no stone 
unturned for the protection and welfare of our soldiers, we 
must not forget that it is not the American ideal to bribe our 
young men into the patriotic service of their country by 
thoughts of comfort and amusement. Moving pictures and 
soda water fountains have their places, but endurance of hard- 
ship, sacrifice, competition, and the knowledge that he is 
strong and able to inflict blows and overcome obstacles are 
the factors that in the last analysis give the soldier his morale. 
And such is the growing morale of our present Army." 

Thus Stimson emphasized, in the autumn of 1941, the one 
finally critical element in the morale of the individual soldier. 



3So ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

It Is his skill and self-confidence as a fighting man that is cen- 
tral, not his comforts. His morale depends finally on his mili- 
tary training and his confidence in his military leaders. And 
in 14,000 miles of inspections Stimson had already seen 
enough to be sure that in this most important single matter 
the Army was sound as ever. In maneuvers in Tennessee and 
New York, Washington and North Carolina he had seen the 
new divisions, and many of the new commanders. The new 
Army was starting right, and public disturbance over the 
morale of the troops never concerned Stimson as much as 
critics thought it should; he remained certain that as soon as it 
was in action, the Army would have no basic problem of mo- 
rale. To one worried friend he remarked that the day would 
come when the country would draw its own strength of heart 
from the spirit of the armed forces, and in the years that fol- 
lowed he found this prophecy constantly confirmed. 

The national indecision which produced anxiety in Stimson 
and a serious problem of morale in the Army had its effect too 
in the field of production. In three areas Stimson and Patter- 
son found themselves at a disadvantage in their constant cam- 
paign for more and better equipment. 

The first was the government itself. Even within the Army 
it required civilian insistence to insure that procurement 
should be based on a more generous objective than merely the 
exact tables of equipment of projected units. In the Govern- 
ment as a whole the President continued in his refusal to 
appoint a single executive head for all production and pro- 
curement problems. Severely hampered by limitations on his 
authority, Knudsen was not able to instill in all his manufac- 
turers the necessary sense of urgency. In September the Presi- 
dent superimposed on his existing creation an agency called 
SPAB, the Supply, Priorities, and Allocations Board, 
with Donald Nelson as executive director. At the time this 
seemed a step forward, since it did at least give a single agency 
more power than Knudsen and his competitors in other places 
had had, but it soon proved to be only one more unsatisfactory 
makeshift. 

Manufacturers remained cautious not all of them, of 



VALLEY OF DOUBT 381 

course, but many. Neither industry nor government was ready 
for a thoroughgoing conversion from peace to war; it con- 
tinued to be the general practice merely to add military pro- 
duction to the ordinary civilian business of the country, and 
only the partial attention of such great industries as those 
making automobiles and rubber and electric machines was 
given to military production. 

The third and as usual the most explosive source of diffi- 
culty was labor. Stimson's general view of the labor problem 
in a time of national emergency is discussed in a later chapter. 
It is enough here to remark that a united and patriotic re- 
sponse by workingmen depends on the same factors as the 
attitude of soldiers, government officials, and businessmen, and 
during the six months before Pearl Harbor there were more 
strikes and labor stoppages than there would have been if the 
country had been actively in the war; the climactic event in 
this period was a coal strike led by John L. Lewis in Novem- 
ber, at a time when every standard of good sense and loyalty 
demanded full production in the mines. Stimson believed in 
firmness in dealing with strikes that affected the national de- 
fense in this respect he found the President overcautious; 
but actually the basic difficulty was the absence of the war 
spirit 

On August 19, in a talk with Harry Hopkins, Stimson sum- 
marized his feelings on the American production program. 
"Hopkins asserted that the United States was not producing 
munitions as rapidly as it could. I said that was undoubtedly 
true but that it was making them as rapidly as I thought they 
could be made in the light of ( i ) the fact that there was no 
objective like a war to stimulate production; (2) the com- 
plexity of the organization which did not have any single 
responsible head; and (3) the 'persuasive' handling of labor. 
I enumerated the different strikes that were now retarding 
production. I told him that until those three items were 
changed he could not expect full production." (Diary, August 
19, 1941) 



CHAPTER XVI 

The War Begins 



I. PEARL HARBOR 

^ I ^HE Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which ended the 
JL months of indecision has been the subject of more com- 
ment and investigation than any other military action in 
American history. The extraordinary damage there inflicted 
by the Japanese, at negligible cost to themselves, made the 
attack a shocking blow not only at American power but at 
American pride as well. Stimson was as much dismayed as 
anyone by the incompetence of the American defense at Pearl 
Harbor, but he also felt that in the hue and cry over the open- 
ing engagement of the war insufficient attention was given to 
the series of events which preceded it. The problem faced by 
the United States in the Pacific during 1941 was one of un- 
usual complexity, and in the policy pursued by the American 
Government there was much that deserved close study, for the 
Pacific crisis was typical of the difficulties faced by a democ- 
racy in dealing with dictatorial aggression. The principal re- 
sponsibility for the execution of American policy in this 
period rested with President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull. 
The position we have now to make clear is Stimson's own, and 
as such it will vary in some particulars from that of the re- 
sponsible officers, but these very differences may serve to 
illustrate the nature of the problem presented to the admin- 
istration. 

The primary and overriding principle of American foreign 
policy when Stimson entered the Roosevelt Cabinet was un- 
yielding opposition to aggression. It was this single, simple, 
solid rule that was the final touchstone of policy, however 

382 



THE WAR BEGINS 383 

much it might be necessary to give or take in specific instances. 
We have already seen that by December, 1940, Stimson and 
others in the Government were persuaded that in the end this 
principle must lead to war. The world was a house divided, 
and the stand taken by America must in the end be forcefully 
upheld. 

The second great general principle was that the decisive 
theater of the world conflict was in Europe. In June, 1941, 
the already dominant importance of this theater was increased 
by the German attack on Soviet Russia. If the Germans should 
quickly conquer Russia they would be vastly strengthened. 
It was the estimate of War Department Intelligence officers, 
at first, that the campaign could last only one to three months. 
On the other hand, if the Nazis should be stopped by the 
Russians and eventually defeated by a coalition of anti-Nazi 
powers, the world-wide conspiracy of aggression would be 
fatally weakened. Throughout 1941, therefore, the principal 
efforts of the American Government were directed toward the 
support of those resisting aggression in Europe, and with this 
policy Stimson heartily agreed. His only serious differences 
with the President arose out of his conviction that America 
was destined to play a major fighting role in the war. On this 
ground, from September onward, he strongly urged the claims 
of the American Air Forces to a larger share in the American 
output of military aircraft. Admitting that planes allotted to 
the United States might not be immediately useful in combat, 
he argued that "it is better for her [Britain] to have in the 
world a potent, well-armed, friendly American air force than 
a few additional planes. 5 ' 1 

It was against the background of these two major American 
postulates that the Japanese crisis developed. The exact course 
of that development it was impossible to foretell because the 
problem of Japan was necessarily subordinate to the larger 
questions of aggression in general and Nazi Germany in partic- 
ular. At different times there existed in the Government a 
number of different views as to the proper line of policy 
toward the Japanese. 

When he arrived in Washington in 1940, Stimson found 

1 Memorandum to the President, October 21, 1941. 



384 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the administration engaged in a line of policy well described 
by the President as "babying them along." Making no secret 
of its view that the Japanese militarists were morally no better 
than the Nazis, and refusing absolutely to modify its cordial 
relations with China, the American Government was never- 
theless still permitting the export of war materials to Japan, 
although finished munitions were under a "moral embargo" 
which had been established in 1938 and 1939. Both the Presi- 
dent and the State Department were somewhat sensitive to 
criticism of this policy, since they were as well aware as their 
critics of the wickedness of the Japanese. Their object was 
simply to prevent the development of a war crisis in the Pa- 
cific at a time when the United States was both unprepared 
and preoccupied by the Nazis. 

Since 1937, when the Japanese attacked China, Stimson had 
been urging, as a private citizen, an embargo on all American 
trade with Japan, and this attitude he carried with him into 
the Cabinet Recognizing the peril of a premature showdown 
with Japan, he nevertheless believed that the effect of an 
embargo would be to check and weaken the Japanese, rather 
than to drive them into open war. His basic feeling, until more 
than a year after he entered the administration, was that the 
Japanese would not willingly take the suicidal step of making 
war on the United States. The folly of such a course had been 
convincingly described to him by trustworthy Japanese at the 
London Naval Conference ten years earlier, and although he 
did not trust the Japanese leaders of 1940 and 1941 any more 
than he trusted Hitler, he did not accurately appreciate their 
lack of prudence. 

He therefore argued that the best possibility of a successful 
diplomatic adjustment with Japan lay in a policy of the utmost 
firmness. In October, 1940, the embargo on exports to Japan 
was materially extended, and in support of a still more vigor- 
ous policy Stimson wrote a memorandum pointing out how 
Japan had yielded before to American firmness, in her with- 
drawal from Shantung and Siberia in 1919 and her acceptance 
of naval inferiority in 1921. The moral of these events, he 
wrote, was that "Japan has historically shown that she can 
misinterpret a pacifistic policy of the United States for weak- 



THE WAR BEGINS 385 

ness. She has also historically shown that when the United 
States indicates by clear language and bold actions that she 
intends to carry out a clear and affirmative policy in the Far 
East, Japan will yield to that policy even though it conflicts 
with her own Asiatic policy and conceived interests. For the 
United States now to indicate either by soft words or incon- 
sistent actions that she has no such clear and definite policy 
towards the Far East will only encourage Japan to bolder 
action." (Memorandum, October 2, 1940) The theory of this 
memorandum was not borne out by events. When the United 
States at last became genuinely firm, the Japanese did not 
yield ; whether they would have yielded if Stimson's policy 
had been tried earlier it is impossible to say. In retrospect he 
was inclined to think that even by 1940 it was too late to dis- 
suade them, by any line of diplomacy. To be certainly effective 
a firm policy would have had to begin much earlier, and such 
a course would have involved military preparations that 
would hardly have been greeted with favor by the American 
people. 

The line of policy suggested by Stimson and others was 
predicated on the assumption that the Japanese, however 
wicked their intentions, would have the good sense not to get 
involved in war with the United States. The line of policy of 
the President and Mr. Hull was based rather on the impor- 
tance of avoiding such a war, and on the admittedly faint hope 
that Japanese expansion could at least be restrained by some 
sort of diplomatic modus mvendl] Secretary Hull even dared 
to believe in the possibility of a complete reversal of Japanese 
policy ; to strengthen this possibility he constantly pointed out 
to the Japanese the advantages to be gained by a realignment 
in the Pacific under which the Japanese would discard their 
expansionist dreams in favor of co-operative participation in 
a general development of peaceful trade. In such hopes Stim- 
son was unable to join; his own attempts at persuasion had 
failed in far more hopeful circumstances in 1931, and he 
feared that the attempt to win the Japanese now could only 
lead to a further misunderstanding of American intentions. 
It is only fair to add that Hull himself put the possibility of 
success at one in ten. 



386 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

In May, 1941, there arose an issue of grand strategy which 
clearly illustrated the divergence of opinion on Japan within 
the Government. This was the question of the movement of the 
United States Fleet from Hawaii to the Atlantic. With their 
eyes firmly fixed on the all-important struggle to keep open the 
Atlantic sea lane to Britain, Stimson, Knox, and Marshall 
became convinced that the bulk of the fleet should be moved 
to the Atlantic. This proposal was opposed by the State De- 
partment, and not viewed with any great sympathy by the 
admirals of the Navy. On the side of those urging the move 
it was argued that the European theater was the only one of 
decisive importance; that the fleet at Hawaii was no real 
threat to Japan since the Japanese clearly understood that we 
should never use it offensively without ample warning; that it 
had little or no defensive value there, since it was powerless to 
protect the Philippines, while the defense of Hawaii itself 
against invasion could easily be secured by land and air forces; 
that, so far from encouraging the Japanese in their expansion, 
the use of the fleet in the Atlantic would be a clear sign of the 
American intention to take active measures against aggression, 
since the Atlantic was the only ocean in which the American 
Navy could at the time find active employment. To put the 
fleet into action would prove the United States to be in earnest. 

In opposition to the proposal were two major arguments. 
Hull insisted that the faint chance of an honorable diplomatic 
settlement with the Japanese was worth pursuing; he believed 
that any such chance would vanish with the removal from the 
Pacific of America's principal striking force. Further, he and 
his advisers believed that the disappearance of the American 
fleet from the Pacific would be taken by the Japanese as a go- 
ahead signal for their southward expansion; from such expan- 
sion there might well result a situation in which the United 
States would be forced to fight. In these opinions the Navy 
under Admiral Stark concurred, at least to some degree ; the 
Pacific Ocean had for years been the Navy's assumed area of 
combat. 

It is worth noting that in this disagreement both sides be- 
lieved that the Japanese had no present intention of attacking 
the United States; the central disagreement was on the degree 



THE WAR BEGINS 387 

of restraint imposed on her other ambitions by the United 
States Fleet at Hawaii. In the light of later events it may be 
argued either that the Japanese laid their basic plans without 
any fear of the fleet or that they regarded its neutralization as 
an essential prerequisite to their general attack. Certainly its 
presence did not in the end deter them, but it may be con- 
sidered doubtful whether its active employment against the 
Nazis would have been any greater deterrent. So far as Stim- 
son individually is concerned, the core of his position was 
simply that in the fight against the Nazis no handy weapon 
should be left inactive ; his preoccupation with Europe made 
him more disposed than ever to minimize the danger from 
Japan. He simply could not believe that she would dare to 
attack southward so long as both the British Empire and the 
United States remained major unbeaten naval powers, and in 
this, of course, he was wrong he had been more nearly right 
in 1932, when he had foreseen war as the inevitable final 
result of Japanese militarism. 

The result of the disagreement within the Government was 
compromise; the President decided that three battleships and 
an appropriate supporting force should be transferred to the 
Atlantic. It does not seem that anyone was wholly pleased by 
this arrangement, which, however, had the quite fortuitous 
effect of reducing by three the number of capital vessels avail- 
able as Japanese targets on December 7. The President con- 
sidered the subject closed, and Stimson swallowed his dis- 
appointment. 

During July and August, 1941, the whole attitude of the 
American Government toward Japan was changed. The ad- 
vance of the Japanese into southern Indo-China, at a time 
when conversations looking toward better relations were being 
conducted by Hull with the Japanese Ambassador, made it 
finally clear that Japan intended to expand her holdings in 
southeast Asia whenever and wherever such expansion was 
feasible. An abrupt end was put to a line of American policy 
which Stimson at the time considered akin to the "appease- 
ment" of Neville Chamberlain. On July 26, by freezing Japa- 
nese assets, the President completed the embargo he had been 
constructing so cautiously and gradually for three years. On 



388 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

August 12, after a wholly unsatisfactory exchange of notes 
between the President and the Japanese, Hull made it plain 
to Stimson and Knox that the situation in the Pacific might at 
any time develop into a military and not a diplomatic prob- 
lem, 

By a curious coincidence there occurred in this same month 
of August an important change in the thinking of the General 
Staff with regard to the defense of the Philippine Islands. 
For twenty years it had been considered that strategically the 
Philippines were an unprotected pawn, certain to be easily 
captured by the Japanese in the early stages of any war be- 
tween the United States and Japan. Now it began to seem 
possible to establish in the Philippines a force not only suffi- 
cient to hold the Islands but also, and more important, strong 
enough to make it foolhardy for the Japanese to carry their 
expansion southward through the China Sea. For this change 
of view there were two leading causes. One was the contagious 
optimism of General Douglas MacArthur, who in July had 
been recalled to active duty in the United States Army after 
five years of service in building and training the new Philip- 
pine Army. MacArthur knew the current situation in the 
Philippines better than any other American officer, and he 
was surprisingly hopeful about the capabilities of his forces. 

The second reason for the new view of the Philippines was 
the sudden and startling success of American Flying For- 
tresses in operations from the British Isles. Stimson found his 
military advisers swinging to the belief that with an adequate 
force of these heavy bombers the Philippines could become a 
self-sustaining fortress capable of blockading the China Sea 
by air power. The supposed advantage of this new weapon 
was that it could be delivered in force to the Philippine's in 
spite of Japanese control of the surrounding areas. 

Both the optimism of General MacArthur and the estab- 
lishment of an effective force of B-iy's were conditional upon 
time. Thus the new hope for a strong Philippine defense had 
the effect of making the War Department a strong proponent 
of maximum delay in bringing the Japanese crisis to a climax. 
Where before Stimson and Marshall had relied on the general 
Japanese unwillingness to start a war with the English-speak- 



THE WAR BEGINS 389 

ing powers, they now hoped to have the much stronger reli- 
ance of an effective military force on the spot. In their eyes 
the Philippines suddenly acquired a wholly new importance 
and were given the highest priority on all kinds of military 
equipment. As to how much time would be needed, estimates 
varied. On October 6 Stimson told Hull that "we needed three 
months to secure our position." 

As it turned out, the State Department was able to get only 
two months of delay after this October conversation, but Stim- 
son considered that Hull did all that he possibly could, and 
he was at no time critical of the State Department's inability 
to string out the negotiations any further. The defense of the 
Philippines was important, but it was certainly less important 
than the maintenance intact of basic principles of American 
policy in respect to China, and Stimson was certain that noth- 
ing short of an important compromise of these principles 
could have delayed the Japanese attack. 

In the detailed negotiations of October and November 
Stimson had no active part. The beginnings of effective rein- 
forcement of the Philippines rekindled briefly his hope that 
Japan might be persuaded not to force the issue; this new and 
concrete threat might do what a merely potential threat had 
failed to do. But in the latter part of November even this 
cautious hope began to disappear; it became apparent that a 
showdown could not be long delayed. 

On November 26 Hull restated to the Japanese the basic 
American principles for peace in the Pacific. So deep was the 
gulf between these principles and the evidently fixed inten- 
tions of the Japanese Government that on the following morn- 
ing Hull told Stimson, "I have washed my hands of it, and it 
is now in the hands of you and Knox the Army and the 
Navy." (Diary, November 27, 1941) On the same day the 
War and Navy Departments sent war warnings to all United 
States forces in the Pacific. 

During the following days it was learned that a large Japa- 
nese force was proceeding southward by sea from Shanghai. 
News of this force strengthened the conviction of the Amer- 
ican Government that the next Japanese move would be an 
extension southward of the venture already begun. in Indo- 



390 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

China. The target of the force might be Thailand, Singapore, 
Malaya, the Philippines, or the Dutch East Indies. In any of 
these cases except an attack on the Philippines it would be 
necessary for the United States to make a decision as to 
whether or not to join in resistance to the Japanese advance. 
The whole Cabinet shared the President's view that the coun- 
try would support a decision in favor of war. 

Thus during the first week of December the attention of the 
American Government was directed at the Southwest Pacific, 
and the problems faced by the administration seemed to be 
two: first, to make it clear to the Japanese that aggression 
beyond a designated point in that area would mean war with 
the United States, and second, in the event of such aggression, 
to insure the support of the American people for a decision to 
fight Japan. It was still considered unlikely that the Japanese 
would begin their next set of moves by an open attack on the 
United States, and it seemed even less probable that any such 
attack would be directed at the United States Fleet in Hawaii. 

The administration paid the Japanese the compliment of 
assuming that they would take the course best calculated to 
embarrass their potential enemies. It seemed obvious that by 
limiting their overt attack to such areas as Thailand or the 
Dutch East Indies or even Singapore they could insure a 
serious division of opinion among Americans. Although Mr. 
Roosevelt and his advisers hoped and believed that the country 
could be persuaded to fight in such a case, they knew that it 
would reproduce in the Pacific, and in waters half a world 
distant from the United States, the same questions that had 
been presented by Nazi aggression in Europe. There could be 
no assurance that what had been debated indecisively for 
eighteen months in one case would be determined overnight in 
the other. In Stimson's opinion the Japanese aggressors made 
a serious miscalculation when in this crisis of 1941 they did not 
try to divide their foes by piecemeal attacks on one of them 
at a time. 

On December 7, at 2 :oo P.M., "the President called me up 
on the telephone and in a rather excited voice to ask me 'Have 
you heard the news?' I said, 'Well, I have heard the telegrams 
which have been coming in about the Japanese advances in the 



THE WAR BEGINS 391 

Gulf of Siam.' He said, 'Oh no. I don't mean that. They have 
attacked Hawaii. They are now bombing Hawaii.' Well, that 
was an excitement indeed." (Diary, December 7, 1941) 

When Stimson recovered from his astonishment at the Japa- 
nese choice of the greatest American base as a point of attack, 
he was filled with confident hope of a major victory; it seemed 
to him probable that the alerted forces at Hawaii could cause 
very heavy damage to the attacking Japanese. It was not until 
evening that he learned how great a tactical success the Japa- 
nese had achieved in their strategic folly. The military party 
in Japan had undertaken a war which could have only one 
final result, but they had certainly made a good beginning. 

The disaster at Pearl Harbor raised questions of responsi- 
bility, and even guilt, which occupied the attention of a half- 
dozen boards and committees during and after the war. That 
so great and unexpected a defeat should be investigated seemed 
to Stimson entirely natural and proper, but he was frequently 
irritated by the strange conclusions reached by some of the 
investigators. The Army's own Pearl Harbor Board so far 
misconceived the nature of military responsibility that it 
pointed a finger of blame at General Marshall himself, on the 
curious theory that the Chief of Staff is directly at fault when- 
ever one of his subordinate staff officers fails to do a thorough 
job. Only General Marshall himself was seriously upset by 
this preposterous charge, but Stimson regarded it as outrageous 
that the reputation of the Army's finest soldier should be un- 
necessarily subjected to attack, and the answers which Stimson 
himself was forced to prepare for this and other accusations 
seemed to him hardly the best conceivable wartime employ- 
ment of a Cabinet officer's energy. 

His own view of Pearl Harbor was fully set forth during 
these investigations and need not be repeated here in detail. 
He was satisfied that the major responsibility for the catastro- 
phe rested on the two officers commanding on the spot 
Admiral Kimmel and General Short. It was true that the 
War and Navy Departments were not fully efficient in evalu- 
ating the information available to them, and of course it was 
also true that no one in Washington had correctly assessed 



392 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Japanese intentions and capabilities. Stimson like everyone else 
was painfully surprised by the skill and boldness displayed by 
all branches of the Japanese war machine from December 7 
onward. Further, Washington had not adequately appreciated 
the importance of keeping its field commanders fully informed. 
"The novelty of the imminence of war and the fact that our 
outpost commanders were untried in their positions now indi- 
cate that more details and repeated emphasis would have been 
a safer policy." 2 In so far as these later views were not matched 
by foresight in 1941, Stimson along with his associates missed 
a chance to mitigate or prevent the Pearl Harbor disaster. 
The men in Washington did not foresee this attack, and they 
did not take the additional actions suggested by a retrospective 
view. But the basic fact remained : the officers commanding at 
Hawaii had been alerted like other outpost commanders ; un- 
like other outpost commanders they proved on December 7 to 
be far from alert. It did not excuse them that Washington did 
not anticipate that they would be attacked. Washington's belief 
was based, among other things, on its quite natural assumption 
that they would be alert. It was on this assumption that Stim- 
son and others based their initial satisfaction with the news that 
the Japanese had dared to. attack Pearl Harbor. "The outpost 
commander," Stimson pointed out to the Joint Committee of 
Congress, "is like a sentinel on duty in the face of the enemy. 
His fundamental duties are clear and precise. ... It is not the 
duty of the outpost commander to speculate or rely on the pos- 
sibilities of the enemy attacking at some other outpost instead 
of his own. It is his duty to meet him at his post at any time and 
to make the best possible fight that can be made against him 
with the weapons with which he has been supplied." 2 In this 
duty the commanders in Hawaii failed. 

Much of the discussion of Pearl Harbor was confused and 
embittered by a preposterous effort to demonstrate that Presi- 
dent Roosevelt and his advisers had for some unfathomable 
but nefarious reason "planned it that way." There was also a 
marked disposition to believe that men friendly to the Presi- 
dent were hiding something of crucial importance. Stimson 

2 Statement to the Joint Committee of Congress. March ai, 1946. 



THE WAR BEGINS 393 

for one submitted without reservation every relevant passage 
from his private diary, and in addition wrote two long state- 
ments. In the end the prolonged and exhaustive investigation 
by a Joint Committee of Congress produced a majority report 
which Stimson considered both fair and intelligent. While it 
gave him, with the President and other high officials, a general 
approval for discharging their responsibilities with "distinc- 
tion, ability, and foresight," it by no means exonerated War 
Department officials, and the responsibility which it inferen- 
tially placed on him, as head of the War Department, he was 
quite willing to accept. The twisted and malicious views of 
the minority report he considered sufficiently answered by 
the majority. 

Even on December 7, in the midst of the first overwhelming 
reports of disaster, Stimson never doubted that the central 
importance of the Pearl Harbor attack lay not in the tactical 
victory carried off by the Japanese but in the simple fact 
that the months of hesitation and relative inaction were ended 
at a stroke. No single blow could have been better calculated 
to put an end to American indecision. "When the news first 
came that Japan had attacked us, my first feeling was of relief 
that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a 
way which would unite all our people. This continued to be 
my dominant feeling in spite of the news of catastrophes which 
quickly developed. For I feel that this country united has 
practically nothing to fear, while the apathy and divisions 
stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very dis- 
couraging." (Diary, December 7, 1941) 

In the attack on Pearl Harbor a curtain of fire was lowered 
over the problems and anxieties of the preceding months. No 
longer would the secret war plans of the Army's General Staff 
be freely published by a major newspaper as the Chicago 
Tribune had done three days before Pearl Harbor; no longer 
would it be a question whether Congress would permit Amer- 
ican vessels to carry arms to Britain by a narrow margin, 
in mid-November, the Neutrality Act had been amended to 
permit such action; no longer would the administration be 
faced with the awful task of producing on a wartime scale 
with a peacetime attitude ; no longer would there be any foolish 



394 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

doubts about the morale of the American armed forces; no 
longer would the loud and bitter voices of a small minority be 
raised in horror at every forward step to block aggression. 
The die was cast, and Stimson knew that America at war would 
have unity, courage, strength, and will. 

In the four years that followed he suffered often from the 
cares of wartime office, and over every day was cast the grow- 
ing shadow of the casualty lists. But to a man whose tempera- 
ment was that of a soldier, these things were easier to bear 
than the fearful former sight of America half-asleep. On 
December 7, 1941, for the first time in more than twenty years, 
the United States of America was placed in a position to take 
unified action for the peace and security of herself and the 
world. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor restored to 
America the freedom of action she had lost by many cunning 
bonds of her own citizens' contriving. The self-imprisoned 
giant was set free. 

2. MISSION OF DELAY 

"All students of history know that every war has three 
periods . . . the period of the 'onset,' the period of the 'drag' 
(when the war begins to weigh on the nations involved), 
and the 'finish.' During the first period it is inevitable that the 
free government, the government which depends on the con- 
sent of the people, . . . should be at a distinct disadvantage." 
Thus Stimson to his press conference on December n, 1941. 
The American people and their leaders were suddenly face to 
face with the humiliating fact of defeat, and the testing pros- 
pect of still further unavoidable reverses. The galvanic awak- 
ening of the nation after Pearl Harbor made final victory 
seem certain, but the "distinct disadvantage" of the present 
could not be removed overnight. 

It quickly became apparent that the skill and boldness shown 
by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor were not a single isolated 
phenomenon. At Guam and Wake, Singapore and Hong Kong 
the enemy victories began. On December 10 came the first 
landing in the Philippines, to be followed in twelve days by 
a much larger landing, in the classically anticipated area of the 



THE WAR BEGINS 395 

Lingayen Gulf. Everywhere the enemy's advance was unex- 
pectedly successful, and with the destruction of the Prince of 
Wales and the Repulse again on December 10 it became 
apparent that in their technique as well as their power the 
Japanese were for the time being masters of the Southwest 
Pacific. 

For Stimson as Secretary of War the point of focal interest 
was the Philippines. It was quickly apparent that the hopes 
of the previous autumn could not be realized; there would 
be no successful defense of the Philippines by air power. 
The preparations had not been completed; the Japanese were 
too strong; most important of all, there had been no adequate 
realization of the degree to which air power is dependent on 
other things than unsupported airplanes. American planes by 
scores were lost on the ground, in the Philippines as in Hawaii. 
Nor could there be any major reinforcement through the air, 
which, like the sea, came swiftly under Japanese control. Thus 
the defense of the Philippines became once more the desperate 
and losing struggle which had been forecast in the planning 
of earlier years. 

Thus coldly stated, the problem was one which the American 
high command might have been expected to accept regretfully 
as insoluble, writing off the Philippines and preparing to 
defend the defensible. This point of view was not absent from 
the General Staff, and it was forcefully urged by some naval 
leaders. But neither strategically nor politically was the prob- 
lem so simple as it appeared. Strategically it was of very great 
importance that the Army in the Philippines should prolong 
its resistance to the limit. Politically it was still more important 
that this defense be supported as strongly as possible, for neither 
the Filipino people nor the rest of the Far Eastern world could 
be expected to have a high opinion of the United States if she 
adopted a policy of "scuttle." On these grounds Stimson and 
Marshall reacted strongly against any defeatist attitude. They 
argued "that we could not give up the Philippines in that way ; 
that we must make every effort at whatever risk to keep Mac- 
Arthur's line open and that otherwise we would paralyze the 
activities of everybody in the Far East." (Diary, December 
14, 1941) Taking his troubles to the White House, Stimson 



396 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

found to his "great joy" that the President fully agreed with 
him and Marshall "as against the Navy" ; Mr. Roosevelt called 
in the Acting Secretary of the Navy (Knox was in Hawaii) 
and "told him his position told him that he was bound to 
help the Philippines and that the Navy had got to help in it." 
(Diary, December 14, 1941) 

This difference of opinion with the Navy (which largely 
disappeared after the appointment of Admiral King as Naval 
Commander in Chief) was less a matter of strategy than one 
of attitude. Stimson fully understood that the fleet after Pearl 
Harbor was in no condition to mount any major counter- 
offensive, and he admitted too the Navy's right of decision as 
to acceptable and unacceptable risks for its carriers and 
remaining battleships. What he and the President opposed 
was the Navy's apparent lack of aggressive spirit. Frank Knox 
was a fighter, and his spirit was not broken by the disaster at 
Pearl Harbor, but the naval high command as a whole was 
shaken and nervous. The issue was really a broader one than 
the defense of the Philippines; it was the basic and critical 
issue between what Stimson called an "aggressive defense" and 
a "defensive defense." He summarized the matter in his diary 
after a discussion with McCloy, Lovett, and Bundy on Decem- 
ber 17. "I laid before them the issue which was now pending 
before us, namely as to whether we should make every effort 
possible in the Far East or whether, like the Navy, we should 
treat that as doomed and let it go. We all agreed that the first 
course was the one to follow; that we have a very good chance 
of making a successful defense, taking the southwestern Pacific 
as a whole. If w-e are driven out of the Philippines and Singa- 
pore, we can still fall back on the Netherlands East Indies and 
Australia ; and with the cooperation of China if we can keep 
that going we can strike good counterblows at Japan. While 
if we yielded to the defeatist theory, it would have not only 
the disastrous effect on our material policy of letting Japan get 
strongly ensconced in the southwestern Pacific which would be 
a terribly hard job to get her out of, but it would psychologi- 
cally do even more in the discouragement of China and in fact 
all of the four powers who are now fighting very well to- 
gether. Also it would have a very bad effect on Russia. So this 



THE WAR BEGINS 397 

theory goes. It has been accepted by the President, and the 
Army is taking steps to make a solid base at Port Darwin in 
Australia." (Diary, December 17, 1941) 

Events were to prove that even the aggressive defense 
adopted by the President and his advisers succeeded only in 
holding Australia and a small foothold in New Guinea. The 
attempt to reinforce the Philippines, although undertaken 
with the firmness and conviction described above, was a failure. 
The Japanese sea and air blockade was almost complete, and 
although blockade running was energetically organized, very 
little reached General MacArthur. Only by submarine could 
a tenuous connection be maintained. The securing of delay, and 
the maintenance of American honor in the Philippines, thus 
fell to the gallant and isolated Philippine and American forces 
under President Quezon and General MacArthur. 

Through December and January Stimson watched with a 
full heart the skillful and vastly courageous operations of 
MacArthur's forces. Hopelessly outnumbered, and under- 
equipped as no American Army force would be again, they 
exacted losses from the enemy that left no doubt in any mind 
of the quality of the American soldier. Even more heartening 
was the overwhelming proof of the loyalty of the Filipinos. 
By the Japanese attack forty years of American trusteeship 
were put to the acid test of courage, and the test was trium- 
phantly passed. But even these great considerations were over- 
shadowed by the need for facing "the agonizing experience of 
seeing the doomed garrison gradually pulled down." (Diary, 
January 2, 1942) 

And what was "agonizing" for Stimson and others in Wash- 
ington must necessarily be still more trying for Quezon and 
MacArthur in the Philippines. These two men were in the 
battle; they could see, as Washington could not, the tragic 
sufferings of soldiers and civilians alike under the invasion; 
they could not see, as Washington could, that it was not for 
lack of effort that the Philippines were not reinforced. Mes- 
sage after message came from them asking for help, and words 
seemed to be the only answer. Finally, on February 8, Quezon, 
with the unanimous approval of his Cabinet, sent a message to 
the President proposing that the Philippines receive immediate 



398 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and unconditional independence from the United States, and 
that they be forthwith neutralized by agreement between Japan 
and the United States; all troops were to be withdrawn and the 
Philippine Army disbanded. Quezon's message also contained 
strictures against the American failure to reinforce the Philip- 
pines, in terms as unfair as they were wholly understandable. 
With his message came one from High Commissioner Sayre 
stating that, "If the premise of President Quezon is correct 
that American help cannot or will not arrive here in time to 
be availing," Sayre would support his proposal. General 
MacArthur, in forwarding these two messages, added his own. 
After describing in detail the extremely precarious position of 
his command, he warned that, "Since I have no air or sea 
protection you must be prepared at any time to figure on the 
complete destruction of this command. You must determine 
whether the mission of delay would be bette.r furthered by 
the temporizing plan of Quezon or by my continued battle 
effort. The temper of the Filipinos is one of almost violent 
resentment against the United States. Every one of them 
expected help and when it has not been forthcoming they be- 
lieve they have been betrayed in favor of others. ... So far as 
the military angle is concerned, the problem presents itself as 
to whether the plan of President Quezon might offer the best 
possible solution of what is about to be a disastrous debacle. 
It would not affect the ultimate situation in the Philippines 
for that would be determined by the results in other theatres. 
If the Japanese Government rejects President Quezon's propo- 
sition it would psychologically strengthen our hold because of 
their Prime Minister's public statement offering independ- 
ence. If it accepts it, we lose no military advantage because we 
would still secure at least equal delay. Please instruct me." 
Arriving in the War Department, these messages were a 
serious shock to Marshall and Stimson. Quezon's message 
seemed to assume that the Japanese were in fact attacking the 
United States but not the Philippines, and that the Filipino 
people had no interest in the war, a position which Quezon 
himself had repeatedly repudiated in public, and to which he 
could only have been driven by the pressure of his wholly 
distorted view of the American attitude toward supporting 



THE WAR BEGINS 399 

the Philippine campaign. Worse than that. Commissioner 
Sayre and General MacArthur appeared to have made no 
effort to dissuade Quezon from his position and had even given 
it some support in their messages. To Stimson and Marshall it 
seemed obvious that any such proposal as Quezon's would 
simply play into the hands of the Japanese. It would com- 
pletely destroy the historic friendship between the Philippines 
and the United States. It involved an acceptance of the entirely 
disproved notion that the Japanese could be trusted to keep 
an agreement for "neutralization," and worst of all it would 
treat the "two great powers," Japan and America, as equally 
guilty of the destruction of the Philippines. "It was a wholly 
unreal message, taking no account [of] what the war was for 
or what the well known characteristics of Japan towards con- 
quered people were." (Diary, February 9, 1942) 

Stimson and Marshall took the messages to the President 
at once ; "Sumner Welles was present, Cordell Hull being sick. 
The President read the message and then asked Marshall what 
we proposed doing about it. Marshall said that I could state 
our views better than he could and I then gave my views in 
full and as carefully as I could. In order to be more sure of 
no interruption, I arose from my seat and gave my views stand- 
ing as if before the court. The President listened very atten- 
tively and, when I got through, he said he agreed with us. 
Sumner Welles . . . said that he agreed fully." Marshall and 
Stimson returned to the War Department, where the soldier 
drafted a reply to MacArthur while the civilian answered 
Quezon. "We barely finished by two-thirty when we went back 
again to the White House and there met Welles again, and 
also this time Stark and King. We spent an hour or more 
going over the drafts which of course were rather rough. The 
President was very quick and helpful in his suggestions and 
by four o'clock we had them completed and took them back 
to the Department to have written out for sending. It had been 
a pretty hard day, for the taking of the decision which we 
reached was a difficult one, consigning as it did a brave garri- 
son to a fight to the finish and at the same time trying to send 
to Quezon a message which would put our attitude to the 



400 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Philippines upon a correct and elevated basis." (Diary, Feb- 
ruary 9, 1942) 

Out of this day's work came the following radiogram to the 
Philippines. 



MESSAGE SENT TO GENERAL MACARTHUR 

February Q, IQ4? 

"In the second section of this message I am making, through 
you, an immediate reply to President Quezon's proposals of 
February eight. My reply must emphatically deny the possi- 
bility of this Government's agreement to the political aspects 
of President Quezon's proposal. I authorize you to arrange 
for the capitulation of the Filipino elements of the defending 
forces, when and if in your opinion that course appears neces- 
sary and always having in mind that the Filipino troops are 
in the service of the United States. Details of all necessary 
arrangements will be left in your hands, including plans for 
segregation of forces and the withdrawal, if your judgment so 
dictates, of American elements to Fort Mills. The timing 
also will be left to you. 

"American forces will continue to keep our flag flying in 
the Philippines so long as there remains any possibility of 
resistance. I have made these decisions in complete under- 
standing of your military estimate that accompanied President 
Quezon's message to me. The duty and the necessity of resist- 
ing Japanese aggression to the last transcends in importance 
any other obligation now facing us in the Philippines. 

"There has been gradually welded into a common front a 
globe encircling opposition to the predatory powers that are 
seeking the destruction of individual liberty and freedom of 
government. We cannot afford to have this line broken in any 
particular theater. As the most powerful member of this 
coalition we cannot display weakness in fact or in spirit any- 
where. It is mandatory that there be established once and for 
all in the minds of all peoples complete evidence that the 
American determination and indomitable will to win carries 
on down to the last unit. 



THE WAR BEGINS 401 

"I therefore give you this most difficult mission in full 
understanding of the desperate situation to which you may 
shortly be reduced. The service that you and the American 
members of your command can render to your country in the 
titanic struggle now developing is beyond all possibility of 
appraisement. I particularly request that you proceed rapidly 
to the organization of your forces and your defenses so as to 
make your resistance as effective as circumstances will permit 
and as prolonged as humanly possible. 

"If the evacuation of President Quezon and his Cabinet 
appears reasonably safe they would be honored and greatly 
welcomed in the United States. They should come here via 
Australia. This applies also to the High Commissioner. Mrs. 
Sayre and your family should be given this opportunity if you 
consider it advisable. You yourself however must determine 
action to be taken in view of circumstances. 

"Please inform Sayre of this message to you and to Quezon. 

"Submit by radio the essentials of your plans in accordance 
with these instructions. 

"Second section of message. 

"Please convey the following message to President Quezon : 

"I have just received your message sent through General 
MacArthur. From my message to you of January thirty, you 
must realize that I am not lacking in understanding of or 
sympathy with the situation of yourself and the Common- 
wealth Government today. The immediate crisis certainly 
seems desperate but such crises and their treatment must be 
judged by a more accurate measure than the anxieties and 
sufferings of the present, however acute. For over forty years 
the American government has been carrying out to the people 
of the Philippines a pledge to help them successfully, however 
long it might take, in their aspirations to become a self govern- 
ing and independent people with individual freedom and 
economic strength which that lofty aim makes requisite. You 
yourself have participated in and are familiar with the many 
carefully planned steps by which that pledge of self 'govern- 
ment has been carried out and also the steps by which the 
economic independence of your islands is to be made effective. 
May I remind you now that in the loftiness of its aim and the 



402 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

fidelity with which it has been executed, this program of the 
United States towards another people has been unique in the 
history of the family of nations. In the Tydings McDuffie Act 
of one nine three four, to which you refer, the Congress of the 
United States finally fixed the year one nine four six as the date 
in which the Philippine Islands established by that Act should 
finally reach the goal of its hopes for political and economic 
independence. 

"By a malign conspiracy of a few depraved but powerful 
governments this hope is now being frustrated and delayed. 
An organized attack upon individual freedom and govern- 
mental independence throughout the entire world, beginning 
in Europe, has now spread and been carried to the southwestern 
Pacific by Japan. The basic principles which have guided 
the United States in its conduct toward the Philippines have 
been violated in the rape of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, 
Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Albania, Greece, 
Yugoslavia, Manchukuo, China, Thailand and finally the 
Philippines. Could the people of any of these nations honestly 
look forward to true restoration of their independent sover- 
eignty under the dominance of Germany, Italy, or Japan? You 
refer in your telegram to the announcement by the Japanese 
Prime Minister of Japan's willingness to grant to the Philip- 
pines her independence. I only have to refer you to the present 
condition of Korea, Manchukuo, North China, Indo China, 
and all other countries which have fallen under the brutal sway 
of the Japanese government, to point out the hollow duplicity 
of such an announcement. The present sufferings of the Fili- 
pino people, cruel as they may be, are infinitely less than the 
sufferings and permanent enslavement which will inevitably 
follow acceptance of Japanese promises. In any event is it 
longer possible for any reasonable person to rely upon Japanese 
offer or promise? 

"The United States today is engaged with all its resources 
and in company with the governments of twenty-six other 
nations in an effort to defeat the aggression of Japan and its 
Axis partners. This effort will never be abandoned until the 
complete and thorough overthrow of the entire Axis system 
and the governments which maintain it. We are engaged now 



THE WAR BEGINS 403 

in laying the foundations in the southwest Pacific of a develop- 
ment in air, naval, and military power which shall become 
sufficient to meet and overthrow the widely extended and 
arrogant attempts of the Japanese. Military and naval opera- 
tions call for recognition of realities. What we are doing there 
constitutes the best and surest help that we can render to 
the Philippines at this time. 

"By the terms of our pledge to the Philippines implicit in 
our forty years of conduct towards your people and expressly 
recognized in the terms of the Tydings McDuffie Act, we have 
undertaken to protect you to the uttermost of our power until 
the time of your ultimate independence had arrived. Our 
soldiers in the Philippines are now engaged in fulfilling that 
purpose. The honor of the United States is pledged to its ful- 
fillment. We propose that it be carried out regardless of its 
cost. Those Americans who are fighting now will continue to 
fight until the bitter end. Filipino soldiers have been rendering 
voluntary and gallant service in defense of their own homeland. 

"So long as the flag of the United States flies on Filipino 
soil as a pledge of our duty to your people, it will be defended 
by our own men to the death. Whatever happens to the present 
American garrison we shall not relax our efforts until the 
forces which we are now marshaling outside the Philippine 
Islands return to the Philippines and drive the last remnant of 
the invaders from your soil." 

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. 



Thus the order was given, with its reasons, for the continu- 
ance of a battle which in the end accomplished all that was 
desired by the writers of this message. The response from Que- 
zon was prompt and definite. In his autobiography he has 
described the effect of the President's message as "overwhelm- 
ing" ; he answered at once that he fully understood the reasons 
for the President's decision and would abide by it. General 
MacArthur replied with even greater firmness that he would 
resist to the end, and that he had not the least intention of 
surrendering Filipino elements of his command. "I count on 
them equally with the Americans to hold fast to the end," said 



404 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

his message. As for evacuation, his family would remain with 
him, and it was not safe that Quezon should leave, as his health 
would not permit the trials of the necessary voyage. Later, at 
the direct order of the President (an order fully approved by 
Stimson and Marshall), MacArthur, with his family, would 
leave the Philippines, to undertake the great task of leading 
the Allied forces north from Australia, and Quezon too would 
be persuaded to take his government into temporary exile. But 
the spirit of resistance symbolized by the two leaders would 
endure, in the Philippines and in history. 

In this interchange of messages there were many of the 
complex elements that lay at the heart of World War II. Here 
was the leader of a colonial people, after two months of gallant 
resistance to aggression, driven in his resentment of what 
seemed a policy of nonsupport to repudiate the role of willing 
sacrifice. His American commander, unable to understand 
the failure of his government to give him needed help, was 
balancing the alternative of resistance against what he him- 
self called a "temporizing plan." Both of these men had already 
amply proved their skill and courage; both had repeatedly 
demonstrated their devotion to the common cause of the free 
world. Yet neither appeared to appreciate the moral abdica- 
tion involved in the proposal of a neutralized Philippines. 

To the men in Washington the proper reply seemed clear, 
but to make it was a test of their own resolution. Not for the 
first or last time, Stimson and Marshall took courage from 
each other and found themselves fully supported by the Presi- 
dent. The central problem here was moral, far transcending in 
its meaning any question of the "mission of delay." It was a 
part of the necessary tragedy of war that this moral issue must 
be met by a command to other men to die. Noble Romans 
might find such orders easy, but the men who met in the White 
House that day were ordinary Americans in their feelings 
about human life. To give the order was a matter of duty, -but 
it was in its loyal execution that the true glory would be 
found. And so on February 13 Stimson sent General Mac- 
Arthur his final message in acknowledgment of the replies 
received from the Philippines: "The superb courage and 



THE WAR BEGINS 405 

fidelity of you and Quezon are fully recognized by the Presi- 
dent and every one of us." 

The decision of December, reiterated in the radiograms of 
February, reached its appointed ending in the final surrender 
of the battered remnants of the American and Filipino forces 
on Corregidor in early May. There followed three more 
years of suffering for the survivors and for all who honored 
their achievement. The best statement of the service of these 
men to America, the Philippines, and themselves was made 
by General Wainwright in his last message from the Rock: 
"We have done our best, both here and on Bataan, and al- 
though beaten we are still unashamed." 3 

The advance of the Japanese suffered serious delay only in 
the Philippines. Singapore fell on February 15; in April the 
Japanese easily took Batavia, capital of the Netherlands East 
Indies. Stimson like other Americans could only watch in 
gloomy frustration while the Japanese filled the vacuum 
created by their initial victories of sea and air. It was fortunate 
that the decision to reinforce Australia had been taken in 
December, for the distance of that continent, and American 
unfamiliarity with wartime logistics, made the execution of 
that decision painfully slow. One shipment of light bombers 
was anxiously watched by Stimson and Marshall as it arrived 
in December in Brisbane. Six weeks later they were still wait- 
ing in vain for word that the planes were ready to fight. 

Meanwhile Stimson's own attention was turned to problems 
of defense closer at home. The losses at Pearl Harbor tem- 
porarily so weakened the Navy that the defense of the west 
coast became an Army assignment, and in December the War 
Department executed an unprecedented deployment of troops 
to protect that area. In May, when the Japanese Fleet disap- 
peared eastward on a combat mission, Marshall made a swift 
and skillful personal inspection of the western defenses, for 
he joined in Stimson's belief that the famous Doolittle raid 
a pet project of the President, and a remarkable psychological 
victory in a period when such victories were valuable might 
provoke retaliation governed more by pride than by strategy. 

3 Biennial report of the Chief of Staff, July I, 1943, p. 12. 



4 o6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

At the same time, mindful of its duty to be prepared for any 
emergency, the War Department ordered the evacuation of 
more than a hundred thousand persons of Japanese origin from 
strategic areas on the west coast. This decision was widely 
criticized as an unconstitutional invasion of the rights of indi- 
viduals many of whom were American citizens, but it was 
eventually approved by the Supreme Court as a legitimate 
exercise of the war powers of the President. What critics 
ignored was the situation that led to the evacuation. Japanese 
raids on the west coast seemed not only possible but probable 
in the first months of the war, and it was quite impossible to 
be sure that the raiders would not receive important help from 
individuals of Japanese origin. More than that, anti-Japanese 
feeling on the west coast had reached a level which endangered 
the lives of all such individuals ; incidents of extra-legal vio- 
lence were increasingly frequent. So, with the President's 
approval, Stimson ordered and McCloy supervised a general 
evacuation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans from strategic 
coastal areas, and they believed in 1947 that the eventual result 
of this evacuation, in the resettlement of a conspicuous minority 
in many dispersed communities throughout the country, was to 
produce a distinctly healthier atmosphere for both Japanese 
and Americans. 

It remained a fact that to loyal citizens this forced evacu- 
ation was a personal injustice, and Stimson fully appreciated 
their feelings. He and McCloy were strong advocates of the 
later formation of combat units of Japanese- American troops; 
the magnificent record of the 442nd Combat Team justified 
their advocacy. By their superb courage and devotion to duty, 
the men of that force won for all Japanese- Americans a clear 
right to the gratitude and comradeship of their American 
countrymen. 

While the attention of the War Department was necessarily 
focused in large measure on the threat to the west coast, there 
were in the early months of 1942 other areas almost equally 
menaced. Stimson himself was principally interested in the 
Panama Canal. An attack in California might be extremely dis- 
turbing to Calif ornians, and a failure to repel it would be intol- 
erable, but if the Japanese were interested in securing impor- 
tant results, the best target in the Western Hemisphere was the 



THE WAR BEGINS 407 

Canal. A breach in the Gatun Lake Dam or Locks would put 
the Canal out of service for an estimated two years, and on an 
inspection trip to Panama in March Stimson found that the 
officers in charge of the defenses believed that such damage 
could be effectively prevented only by intercepting enemy 
aircraft carriers before they had discharged their planes. In 
retrospect he believed that the Canal would have been a better 
target than Pearl Harbor for the initial Japanese attack. 
Even in March, after three months of energetic and able prep- 
aration, the Canal defenses were far from perfect, and on his 
return to Washington he was able to give a considerable 
stimulus to the varied elements of the new defense system, 
which was based on a constant patrol of radar-equipped long- 
range planes, together with an inner patrol and a modern air- 
craft warning service. Radar equipment and technique were 
the central requirements, and in his work to supply both to 
Panama Stimson learned how important it was that the two 
go together. 

One vital element in the defense of the Canal had already 
been provided shortly after December 7. The attack at Pearl 
Harbor emphasized again the importance of unity of com- 
mand ; all the armed forces in any one area must have a single 
commander. Stimson was ashamed that the lesson had to be so 
painfully learned ; for months he had read it in the experience 
of the British in North Africa, Crete, and Greece. Incautiously 
he had assumed that it was equally well learned by others, 
but even after Pearl Harbor it was only by the force and tact 
of General Marshall that unity of command was quickly 
established in all the outposts, and even then there were com- 
promises as in the Atlantic approaches to the Canal, where 
the naval commander was independent of General Andrews 
at Panama. 

Neither the west coast nor Panama was ever attacked by 
the Japanese (if we except a brief shelling by a single sub- 
marine off California, and the remarkable wind-blown fire 
bombs of the last year of the war). In the naval victories of 
the Coral Sea and Midway, the onset was ended. At Guadal- 
canal in August the initiative passed to the Americans, and 
in September and October General MacArthur reversed the 



4 o8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

enemy advance in New Guinea. But months before these events 
the emphasis in Stimson's thinking had shifted. Having been 
among the first to insist on the establishment of an effective 
line of resistance in the Pacific, he became, in February and 
March, one of the earliest to emphasize that the Pacific theater 
was and must remain secondary. But this attitude was the 
result of his thinking on larger matters of strategy, and it may 
well be left to a later chapter. 

3. WAR SECRETARY 

The existence of a state of war radically revises the func- 
tions of a Secretary of War. In time of peace he is ordinarily 
one of the most independent and least noticed of Cabinet 
officers; once or twice a year he takes the stage to make his 
plea for funds ; occasionally the public will be somewhat sur- 
prised to discover that he has other than military functions. 
In a time of approaching crisis he becomes somewhat more 
important; he must tell what his Department needs, always 
in terms of defense, and his counsel will have weight in diplo- 
matic problems. In wartime all this changes; suddenly his 
branch of the Government becomes central. This shift will 
please some and annoy others of his colleagues, but it is inevi- 
table. He finds himself in constant contact with the President, 
whose function as Commander in Chief takes precedence over 
all his other responsibilities; the nature of this relationship 
depends entirely on the individuals concerned, for it has no 
constitutional rule, and no set tradition. Only a part of the 
Secretary's duties concerns directly military questions, for in 
wartime the demands of the Army enter into every aspect of 
national life. Furthermore the enhanced prestige of the War 
Department will often operate to draw its officials into activi- 
ties which even in wartime are no central part of their business, 
and frequently the men who mutter most about "military 
dominance" will be among the first to seek military support 
when they think they can get it; others, reluctant to accept 
the responsibility for unpopular decisions, will secure War 
Department approval for their action and then let it be under- 
stood that they have acted only under military pressure. 



THE WAR BEGINS 409 

Within the Army, war brings more changes still. In the 
making of a citizen army the central issue is leadership; of 
such leadership war is the final test. But this leadership must 
be military ; the confidence of the Army and the country must 
be confidence in soldiers. If the generals are successful, they 
will receive the credit they deserve, and they will receive in 
addition an uncritical emotional support that has no counter- 
part in peacetime democratic life. If they fail or seem to 
fail they will be quickly forgotten, but the fear their failure 
makes will spread to the whole military establishment. The 
pearl of highest price for a democracy at war is well-placed 
confidence in its military leadership. It thus becomes the duty 
of the Secretary of War to support, protect, and defend his 
generals. Those who fail must be quietly removed ; those who 
succeed must be publicly acclaimed; those who come under 
attack, even when the attack is justified, must, if they are 
skillful fighting officers, be sustained and encouraged for the 
first-rate field commander cannot be replaced by formal requi- 
sition. A rule which is sound for all administration everywhere 
thus becomes vital in an army at war. You discipline and repri- 
mand in private; you praise and promote in public; and you 
back your subordinates. The function of the civilian Secretary 
is dual : as a responsible public official, it is his duty to insure 
that the Army serves the broad public interest; as the Army's 
chief it is his duty to act as the defender of the Army against 
its enemies and detractors. 

These, then, were the duties to which Stimson addressed 
himself after Pearl Harbor. The core of the high command 
in the War Department did not change between December 
7, 1941, and August 15, 1945. To Stimson's staff were added, 
from time to time, civilians of special qualifications who be- 
came members of his small personal circle of assistants. In 
the General Staff officers came and went, but the atmosphere 
of that body remained an atmosphere inspired by George 
Marshall. The unity and harmony at the top remained un- 
broken, and it was a team of men whose single object was to 
win the war. The proper record of the men who served there 
can be written only in terms of the whole accomplishment, 
and the whole accomplishment cannot yet be assessed as his- 



4 io ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tory. In the chapters that follow there will be many a story 
only half-told, for the decisions and policies in which Stimson 
had a part have not yet been fully connected in the records 
with their results. And it is not always easy to be sure 
even with the aid of diaries and recollection whether an idea 
or a decision started in Stimson's mind or in Marshall's, or in 
the civil or the military staff. The story that follows is personal, 
and not official, but the distinction is arbitrary in the extreme. 
At no other time in his life was Stimson so thoroughly sur- 
rounded by loyal, understanding, and able men as during 
the forty-four months of World War II. 

The worst mistake of all would be to assume that in what 
follows there is any adequate record of the labors of the War 
Department high command. If there is a man whose personal 
history parallels that whole vast record it is General Marshall 
and not Stimson, but probably there is not such a man. For 
where there is mutual confidence, there can be decentraliza- 
tion, and where there is initiative, decentralization will pro- 
duce programs and policies and results which no higher com- 
mander need expect to find in his biography. In a sense it was 
Stimson's greatest administrative success that he kept his desk 
free for those problems which, by their importance or peculiar- 
ity, only he could undertake. 

This was a necessity for more than one reason. Stimson's 
mind was so constructed that it could hold only one major 
problem at a time. He disliked interruptions; he liked thor- 
oughness. Traits of this kind do not grow weaker as a man 
grows older; if Stimson had not trusted those around him he 
must inevitably have become a dangerous bottleneck. His 
value to the War Department must come from the application 
of his principles and experience to major matters. His friend 
Grenville Clark used to tell him that he could do his job in 
four hours a day; this was an optimistic estimate, but the prin- 
ciple was correct. 

Neither custom nor statute is based on this theory of a 
Cabinet officer's functions, and many a man has been buried 
by the mass of detailed work which will cross a government 
official's desk if he lets it. From the ordinary details Stimson 
was protected by the devoted skill of John W. Martyn, the 



THE WAR BEGINS 4" 

War Department's senior civil servant. With almost flawless 
discrimination Martyn separated the wheat from the chaff, 
calling to Stimson's attention only what it was necessary that 
he handle. From the thousands of signatures required by 
law he was relieved by a machine which reproduced his 
signature in lifelike form. For the mass of visitors who were 
certain that their business could only be handled by the Secre- 
tary of War in person there were two techniques. If possible, 
they were kept away; if not, then Stimson would hear them 
briefly and sympathetically, delivering them as quickly as pos- 
sible into the hands of the appropriate subordinate. If they 
were then disappointed in their quest, he had still been polite; 
it was a technique that Stimson would have liked to be able 
to teach to Franklin Roosevelt, whose natural good will often 
took the shape of quick and unredeemable promises. 

Stimson's concern for his private affairs was cut to a mini- 
mum by the painstaking work of his old law firm, the insight 
and experience of his personal secretary, Elizabeth Neary, and 
the loyal help of his successive military aides. Most of all, he 
had the care and support of Mrs. Stimson. 

The work that remained was not light. Each day he rose at 
six-thirty, had a short walk before breakfast, and dictated for 
an hour or more before proceeding to the Department. There 
he remained through the day until the late afternoon, return- 
ing when he could for a game of deck tennis around five-thirty. 
In the evening he was usually alone with Mrs. Stimson, read- 
ing the "easier" official papers, or at dinner with one of his 
small circle of close friends; but often when problems were 
pressing the evening too was given to work. 

Washington was a city whose climate he considered designed 
for the destruction of the sanity of government officials, and 
he found two ways of escape. He could fly to Highhold for 
the week end ; the small problems of a farm in wartime were 
a welcome relaxation, and in the intimacy of home he could 
talk with old friends like a soldier on leave from the front. 
Or he could go on an inspection trip. Stimson believed that 
the visits of a Secretary of War were on the whole encouraging 
to the troops, though this belief was somewhat shaken by 
the evident disappointment of a group of lieutenants in New- 



4 i2 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

foundland who had been expecting Hedy Lamarr. In any 
case he was certain that they were encouraging to him. On 
four overseas tours and frequent journeys to camps and air- 
fields in the United States he invariably found new strength, 
and often new ideas, for the work in Washington. 

A similar source of encouragement was available in Wash- 
ington, in the constant stream of men from the war theaters. 
These were always welcome visitors in the Secretary's office; 
liaison officers, foreign emissaries, and returning troop leaders 
he eagerly questioned, and in their answers there was a direct- 
ness of contact that the daily cables could not give him. In 
the generally high quality of the officers fresh from the wars 
there was renewed assurance that the war was in safe hands ; 
it was heartening to find that the major general of 1943 had 
fulfilled the promise of the major of 1940. 

There is terror in the very name of war, and the responsi- 
bilities of wartime leadership are wearing beyond the knowl- 
edge of those who have not carried them. But in righteous war 
there is also strength for the spirit, and it comes mainly from 
the front lines backward. In the needs of the men who were 
fighting, the undying challenge of their death, and the constant 
proof of their quality as men and soldiers there was an ever 
growing source of inspiration for all at home. And this inspi- 
ration was greater for Stimson than for the ordinary citizen, 
for he was closer to the Army, more directly aware of its work, 
and accountable for its support. In the force of this feeling is 
not merely the explanation of his continued strength to serve 
but also the motivation for many of the policies and purposes 
which we are about to discuss. 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Army and Grand Strategy 



I . PEARL HARBOR TO NORTH AFRICA 

IMMEDIATELY after Pearl Harbor it became necessary 
for the United States and Great Britain to concert their 
strategy. In the week before Christmas, 1941, Winston 
Churchill and his principal military advisers arrived in Wash- 
ington for the first of the great wartime meetings with the 
President and American advisers. 

The most important single accomplishment of this meeting 
was that it laid the groundwork for the establishment of an 
effectively unified Allied high command. The Combined 
Chiefs of Staff, set up in Washington in early 1942, rapidly 
became a fully developed instrument for the co-ordination of 
land, sea, and air warfare in a world-wide war. Its seven mem- 
bers, four Americans and three Britons, gradually developed 
an authority and influence exceeded only by the decisive 
meetings between the President and the Prime Minister. 
For their success there were several causes, but in Stimson's 
mind these could in the main be reduced to two. One was the 
inflexible determination of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill 
to fight the war as a unified team. The other was the organizing 
genius and diplomatic skill of George Marshall. It was Mar- 
shall who insisted that the Combined Chiefs should in fact be 
chiefs, and not merely elders of the council; the British mem- 
bers were the direct representatives of the military chiefs of 
the British armed forces, while the American members were 
themselves the responsible leaders of the services which they 
represented. It was Marshall too who guided the develop- 
ment of the staff work of the Combined Chiefs, insisting on a 

413 



4 i 4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

continuous record of consideration and decision and directive. 
Finally, it was Marshall, with the particular assistance and 
support of an equally disinterested and farsighted soldier- 
statesman, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who made it possible 
for the Combined Chiefs to act not as a mere collecting point 
for the inevitable rivalries between services and nations but 
as an executive committee for the prosecution of a global war. 

Marshall was also the primary agent in the establishment 
and operation of the strictly American counterpart to the 
Combined Chiefs; in spite of the urging of Stimson and 
others, the President for some time hesitated to approve an 
executive agency of this type for co-ordinating the American 
military effort; he was particularly doubtful about the wisdom 
of appointing any officer as Chief of Staff to himself. Marshall 
combined his advocacy of such an appointment with a refusal 
to accept it for himself, arguing that it would only be accept- 
able to the Navy if an admiral received the appointment. The 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, when finally organized, included four 
officers: the President's Chief of Staff and the senior officers 
of the Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces; these were the 
same men who served as American members of the Combined 
Chiefs, and they exercised direct supervision over the Amer- 
ican share of the Allied military effort. The Joint Chiefs 
became the President's direct military advisers. 

As it became gradually more effective, this formal organiza- 
tion of the staffs had, in Stimson's view, a most salutary effect 
on the President's weakness for snap decisions; it thus offset 
a characteristic which might otherwise have been a serious 
handicap to his basically sound strategic instincts. Both in the 
December meeting of 1941 and in the following June the 
President made suggestions to the Prime Minister which if 
seriously pursued must have disrupted the American military 
effort. Mr. Roosevelt was fond of "trial balloons," and per- 
haps Stimson's fear of this technique was due largely to its 
complete dissimilarity from his own method of thought, but 
he nevertheless felt certain that both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. 
Churchill were men whose great talents required the balancing 
restraint of carefully organized staff advice. 

Stimson, as Secretary of War, was neither a professional 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 415 

soldier nor the finally responsible political leader, and the 
organization which made the Chiefs of Staff directly respon- 
sible to the President left him with no formal responsibility 
in matters of military strategy. This arrangement might have 
disturbed him seriously if he had not continued to enjoy a 
relationship of complete mutual confidence with the President 
and with Generals Marshall and Arnold. He continued to 
be called in, as the advocate of the War Department and as 
a constitutionally recognized adviser to the President, and he 
thus became an active participant in the two years of Anglo- 
American discussion over the grand strategy of their European 
campaigns. 

The detailed discussions in the meeting of December, 1941, 
were largely devoted to the problems of the Pacific, where the 
situation was immediately critical, but even in the face of the 
Japanese advance there was no deviation from the principle 
already accepted by both sides before Pearl Harbor only the 
European theater was decisive. In the language of a memo- 
randum prepared by Stimson and used by the President as the 
agenda for the first general meeting of the conference, "Our 
joint war plans have recognized the North Atlantic as our 
principal theatre of operations should America become in- 
volved in the war. Therefore it should now be given primary 
consideration and carefully reviewed in order to see whether 
our position there is safe." The first essential was "the preser- 
vation of our communications across the North Atlantic with 
our fortress in the British Isles covering the British Fleet. 7 ' 
It was accordingly decided that an immediate beginning 
should be made in the establishment of an American force in 
Great Britain. 

By itself the decision of December was not definitive, since 
the general agreement on the central importance of Great 
Britain did not include any strategic plan for the use of that 
fortress as a base for offensive operations. In the middle of 
February Stimson began to feel that the absence of such a plan 
was a serious weakness ; without it there was no firm commit- 
ment that could prevent a series of diversionary shipments of 



4 i6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

troops and supplies to other areas more immediately threat- 
ened. In March his fears were strikingly confirmed by the 
arrival in Washington of a gloomy message from Mr. Church- 
ill suggesting increased American commitments in non-Euro- 
pean areas of the globe, to meet the Axis threat developing in 
Africa, southeastern Europe, and the Far East At a White 
House meeting Stimson argued that the proper policy was that 
of avoiding such dispersion, and instead, "sending an over- 
whelming force to the British Isles and threatening an attack 
on the Germans in France ; that this was the proper and ortho- 
dox line of our help in the war as it had always been recog- 
nized and that it would now have the effect of giving Hitler 
two fronts to fight on if it could be done in time while the 
Russians were still in. It would also heavily stimulate British 
sagging morale." (Diary, March 5, 1942) Stimson found on 
the following day that his view was fully confirmed by the 
detailed military analysis of the War Plans Division under 
Brigadier General Eisenhower, and the same general position 
was taken by all the President's advisers, the Navy accepting 
primary responsibility for the necessary labors in the Pacific. 
On March 8 the President replied to the Prime Minister 
proposing as a general rule that the British alone should as- 
sume the responsibility for the Middle East, the Americans 
the responsibility for the Pacific, while both nations jointly 
should operate in the critical Atlantic theater. At the same 
time it was decided that the American planners should pre- 
pare in detail a plan for invading Europe across the English 
Channel. 

On March 25, "At one o'clock we lunched with the Presi- 
dent in the Cabinet room. Knox, King, Harry Hopkins and 
Arnold, Marshall and I were there. The subject of discussion 
was the Joint Planners' report. The President started out and 
disappointed, and at first staggered, me by a resume of what he 
thought the situation was, in which he looked like he was 
going off on the wildest kind of dispersion debauch; but, after 
he had toyed a while with the Middle East and the Mediter- 
ranean basin, which last he seemed to be quite charmed with, 
Marshall and I edged the discussion over into the Atlantic and 
held him there. Marshall made a very fine presentation. . . . 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 417 

Towards the end of the meeting when the President suggested 
that the subject be now turned over to the Combined Chiefs of 
Staff organization (British and American), Hopkins took up 
the ball and made a strong plea that it should not go to that 
organization at all where it would simply be pulled to pieces 
and emasculated ; but, as soon as the Joint American Army and 
Navy Chiefs of Staff had perfected it, someone (and he meant 
Marshall as he had told me before) should take it directly 
over to Churchill, Pound, Portal, and Brooke, who are the 
highest British authorities, and get it through them directly. 
This stopped the President's suggestion and we came away 
with his mandate to put this in shape if possible over this 
week end." (Diary, March 25, 1942) 

Stimson's own strong distaste for the "charming" Mediter- 
ranean basin no doubt contributed to his alarm at the Presi- 
dent's interest in it. In any case, this meeting made it clear 
that although Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to support the idea 
of a trans-Channel attack, the concept was not yet his own. 
Two days later, with the warm approval of Hopkins and 
Marshall, Stimson wrote the President a letter designed to 
persuade him to take a firm and final position. 



Confidential 

March 27, 1942 
Dear Mr. President: 

John Sherman said in 1877, "The only way to resume specie 
payments is to resume." Similarly, the only way to get the 
initiative in this war is to take it. 

My advice is : As soon as your Chiefs of Staff have com- 
pleted the plans for the northern offensive to your satisfac- 
tion, you should send them by a most trusted messenger and 
advocate to Churchill and his War Council as the American 
plan which you propose and intend to go ahead with if ac- 
cepted by Britain. You should not submit it to the secondary 
British Chiefs of Staff here for amendment They know about 
it and, if they have comment, they can send their comment 
independently to Great Britain. 

And then having done that, you should lean with all your 



4 i8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

strength on the ruthless rearrangement of shipping allotments 
and the preparation of landing gear for the ultimate invasion. 
That latter work is now going on at a rather dilettante pace. 
It should be pushed with the fever of war action, aimed at a 
definite date of completion not later than September. The 
rate of construction of a number of landing barges should not 
be allowed to lose the crisis of the World War. And yet that 
is the only objection to the offensive that, after talks with 
British critics here, I have heard made. 

If such decisive action is once taken by you, further suc- 
cessful dispersion of our strength will automatically be termi- 
nated. We shall have an affirmative answer against which to 
measure all such demands ; while, on the other hand, so long 
as we remain without our own plan of offensive, our forces 
will inevitably be dispersed and wasted. 

Faithfully yours, 

HENRY L. STIMSON 
Secretary of War. 
The President, 
Hyde Park, New York 



The plan for which Stimson and Marshall were arguing 
went under the code name of BOLERO. It contemplated a maxi- 
mum build-up of American strength in Great Britain, looking 
toward a full-scale invasion in the spring of 1943, with fifty 
divisions, 60 per cent of them American, on the continent of 
Europe by the end of that summer. In the event of a desperate 
crisis on the Russian front in 1942, it also included the alter- 
native possibility of a much smaller "beachhead" invasion in 
the autumn of that year, but this alternative, known as SLEDGE- 
HAMMER, was conceded to be less desirable. Concern over the 
plan SLEDGEHAMMER was in the end the cause of the abandon- 
ment of BOLERO ; to Stimson, SLEDGEHAMMER'S possible dangers 
did not seem so important. His objective was to secure a 
decision to invade Europe from the British base at the earliest 
practicable moment; only developing events could show 
whether that moment would be in 1942 or 1943. 

On April i the President accepted the BOLERO plan and dis- 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 419 

patched Hopkins and Marshall to London to secure the 
approval of the British. The emissaries were in the main 
successful and returned to Washington with an agreement to 
proceed on the basis of BOLERO. Stimson was delighted. But 
the agreement held for less than two months. 

BOLERO was the brain child of the United States Army; the 
President and the Prime Minister had accepted it, but neither 
of the two had been fully and finally persuaded. Stimson 
never knew which of them was responsible for the Washing- 
ton meetings in June at which the whole question was re- 
opened. The initiative for the meeting came from Mr. 
Churchill, but he might well have acted on the basis of an 
indication that the President was not completely certain about 
the wisdom of BOLERO. Mr Roosevelt continued to lean toward 
an operation in North Africa, known in this period as GYM- 
NAST, and on June 17 he reopened the subject with his ad- 
visers. "The President sprung on us a proposition which 
worried me very much. It looked as if he was going to jump 
the traces [after] all that we have been doing in regard to 
BOLERO and to imperil really our strategy of the whole situa- 
tion. He wants to take up the case of GYMNAST again, thinking 
that he can bring additional pressure to save Russia. The only 
hope I have about it at all is that I think he may be doing it 
in his foxy way to forestall trouble that is now on the ocean 
coming towards us in the shape of a new British visitor. But 
he met with a rather robust opposition for the GYMNAST prop- 
osition. Marshall had a paper already prepared against it for 
he had a premonition of what was coming. I spoke very 
vigorously against it." The Navy was noncommittal but not 
nearly so vigorous in opposition as Stimson would have liked. 
"Altogether it was a disappointing afternoon." (Diary, June 
17, 1942) 

In the following two days Stimson prepared his brief in 
defense of BOLERO. The Prime Minister and his team had ar- 
rived, and it was evident that they were discussing new diver- 
sions. All of Stimson's experience as an advocate, and all of 
his conviction that the war would be won only by a cross- 
Channel campaign went into a letter written on June 19 and 



420 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

dispatched to the President with the unanimous endorsement 
of General Marshall and his staff. 



Personal and Secret 

June 19, 1942 
Dear Mr. President: 

While your military advisers are working out the logistics 
of the problem which you presented to us on Wednesday, may 
I very briefly recall to your memory the sequence of events 
which led to and the background which surrounds this prob- 
lem. I hope it may be helpful to you. 

1. Up to the time when America entered the war, the Brit- 
ish Empire had, by force of circumstances, been fighting a 
series of uphill defensive campaigns with insufficient resources 
and almost hopeless logistics. The entry of Japan into the war 
and the naval disasters at Pearl Harbor and the Malay Penin- 
sula imposed new defensive campaigns in the theatres of the 
Far East. 

2. After the discussions with Mr. Churchill's party here 
last December the need for a carefully planned offensive be- 
came very evident. Russia had successfully fought off the 
entire German Army for six months. Winter had begun and 
the shaken and battered German Army would be helpless to 
renew its offensive for nearly six months more. The one thing 
Hitler rightly dreaded was a second front. In establishing 
such a front lay the best hope of keeping the Russian Army 
in the war and thus ultimately defeating Hitler. To apply the 
rapidly developing manpower and industrial strength of 
America promptly to the opening of such a front was mani- 
festly the only way it could be accomplished. 

3. But the effective application of America's strength re- 
quired prompt, rapid. and safe transportation overseas. The 
allied naval power controlled the seas by only a narrow mar- 
gin. With one exception the Axis Powers controlled every 
feasible landing spot in Europe. By fortunate coincidence one 
of the shortest routes to Europe from America led through the 
only safe base not yet controlled by our enemies, the British 
Isles, 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 421 

4. Out of these factors originated the BOLERO plan. The 
British Isles constituted the one spot (a) where we could 
safely and easily land our ground forces without the aid of 
carrier-based air cover, (b) through which we could without 
the aid of ships fly both bomber and fighting planes from 
America to Europe, (c) where we could safely and without 
interruption develop an adequate base for invading armies 
of great strength. Any other base in western Europe or north- 
west Africa could be obtained only by a risky attack and the 
long delay of development and fortification, (d) where we 
could safely develop air superiority over our chief enemy in 
northern France and force him either to fight us on equal 
terms or leave a bridgehead to France undefended. 

5. The psychological advantages of BOLERO also were mani- 
fest The menace of the establishment of American military 
power in the British Isles would be immediately evident to 
Hitler. It at once tended to remove the possibility of a suc- 
cessful invasion of Britain, Hitler's chief and last weapon. 
It awoke in every German mind the recollections of 1917 and 
1918. 

6. A steady, rapid, and unrelenting prosecution of the 
BOLERO plan was thus manifestly the surest road, first to the 
shaking of Hitler's anti-Russian campaign of '42, and second, 
to the ultimate defeat of his armies and the victorious termina- 
tion of the war. Geographically and historically BOLERO was 
the easiest road to the center of our chief enemy's heart. The 
base was sure. The water barrier of the Channel under the 
support of Britain-based air power is far easier than either 
the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. The subsequent over-land 
route into Germany is easier than any alternate. Over the Low 
Countries has run the historic path of armies between Ger- 
many and France. 

7. Since the BOLERO plan was adopted, subsequent events 
have tended to facilitate our position and justify its wisdom, 
(a) The greatest danger to America's prosecution of the 
BOLERO plan lay in the Pacific from Japan where our then in- 
feriority in aircraft carriers subjected us to the dangers of 
enemy raids which might seriously cripple the vital airplane 
production upon which a prompt BOLERO offensive primarily 



422 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

rests. The recent victory in the mid-Pacific [at Midway] has 
greatly alleviated that danger. Our rear in the west is now at 
least temporarily safe, (b) The psychological pressure of our 
preparation -for BOLERO is already becoming manifest. There 
are unmistakable signs of uneasiness in Germany as well as in- 
creasing unrest in the subject populations of France, Holland, 
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland and Norway. This rest- 
lessness patently is encouraged by the growing American 
threat to Germany. 

8. Under these circumstances an immense burden of proof 
rests upon any proposition which may impose the slightest 
risk of weakening BOLERO. Every day brings us further evi- 
dence of the great importance of unremittingly pressing for- 
ward that plan. When one is engaged in a tug of war, it is 
highly risky to spit on one's hands even for the purpose of 
getting a better grip. No new plan should even be whispered 
to friend or enemy unless it was so sure of immediate success 
and so manifestly helpful to BOLERO that it could not possibly 
be taken as evidence of doubt or vacillation in the prosecution 
of BOLERO. Enemies would be prompt to jump at one or the 
other of these conclusions. 

9. While I have no intention of intruding on any discus- 
sion of logistics by the staff, one or two possible contingencies 
have occurred to me which would bear upon the wisdom of 
now embarking upon another trans-Atlantic expedition such 
as GYMNAST, (a) Assume the worst contingency possible; As- 
sume a prompt victory over Russia which left a large German 
force free for other enterprises. It is conceivable that Germany 
might then make a surprise attempt at the invasion of Britain. 
She would have the force to attempt it. She may well have 
available the equipment for both air-borne and water-borne 
invasion. One of our most reliable military attaches believes 
emphatically that this is her plan a surprise air-borne in- 
vasion from beyond the German boundaries producing a con- 
fusion in Britain which would be immediately followed up 
by an invasion by sea. Our observers in Britain have fre- 
quently advised us of their concern as to the inadequacy of 
British defenses against such an attempt. Obviously in case of 
such an attempt it would be imperative for us to push our 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 423 

forces into Britain at top speed and by means of shipping 
additional to that already allocated to the project. In case a 
large percentage of allied commercial shipping had been tied 
up with an expedition to GYMNAST, such additional reenforce- 
ment of Britain would be impossible, (b) On the other hand, 
if German invasion of Russia is prolonged, even if it is slowly 
successful, the increasing involvement of Germany in the east 
tends to make increasingly easy an Allied invasion into France 
and the acquisition of safe bases therein against Germany, (c) 
Thus German success against Russia, whether fast or slow, 
would seem to make requisite not a diversion from BOLERO but 
an increase in BOLERO as rapidly as possible, (d) Furthermore, 
BOLERO is one overseas project which brings no further strain 
upon our aircraft carrier forces. GYMNAST would necessarily 
bring such a strain and risk. It could not fail to diminish the 
superiority over Japan which we now precariously hold in 
the Pacific. 

10. To my mind BOLERO in inception and in its present de- 
velopment is an essentially American project, brought into 
this war as the vitalizing contribution of our fresh and un- 
wearied leaders and forces. My own view is that it would be 
a mistake to hazard it by any additional expeditionary pro- 
posal as yet brought to my attention. 

Faithfully yours, 

HENRY L. STIMSON 
Secretary of War. 
The President, 
The White House. 



On June 21 there was "a good deal of pow-wow and a rum- 
pus up at the White House." Stimson was not there, but he 
got a full report from Marshall. It appeared that the Prime 
Minister, who had never really liked BOLERO, was particularly 
disturbed by some casual remarks the President had made to 
Lord Mountbatten some time earlier about the possibility of 
having to make a "sacrifice" cross-Channel landing in 1942 
to help the Russians. "According to Marshall, Churchill 
started out with a terrific attack on BOLERO as we had ex- 



4 2 4 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

pected. . . . The President, however, stood pretty firm. I found 
out afterwards through Harry Hopkins that he [the Presi- 
dent] showed my letter, with which Harry said he had been 
much pleased, to the Prime Minister. I had not anticipated 
that because I said some very plain things in it about the Brit- 
ish. Finally, with the aid of Marshall who came into the con- 
versation as a reserve after lunch, the storm was broken and, 
according to Harry Hopkins, Marshall made a very powerful 
argument for BOLERO, disposing of all the clouds that had been 
woven about it by the Mountbatten incident. At any rate 
towards the end it was agreed that we should go ahead full 
blast on BOLERO until the first of September. At that time the 
Prime Minister wanted to have a resume of the situation to 
see whether a real attack could be made [in 1942] without 
the danger of disaster. If not, why then we could reconsider 
the rest of the field. At any rate that seems to have been the 
substance so far." (Diary, June 21, 1942) This was still the 
decision when the Prime Minister returned in haste to Great 
Britain as a result of unexpected British reverses in the Near 
East, where the fall of Tobruk on June 21 had shifted the 
attention of the Washington meeting from grand strategy to 
immediate repair work. 

On July 10, "Marshall told me of a new and rather stagger- 
ing crisis that is xoming up in our war strategy. A telegram 
has come from Great Britain indicating that the British war 
Cabinet are weakening and going back on BOLERO and are 
seeking to revive GYMNAST in other words, they are seeking 
now to reverse the decision which was so laboriously accom- 
plished when Mr. Churchill was here a short time ago. This 
would be simply another way of diverting our strength into 
a channel in which we cannot effectively use it, namely the 
Middle East. I found Marshall very stirred up and emphatic 
over it. He is very naturally tired of these constant decisions 
which do not stay made. This is the third time this question 
will have been brought up by the persistent British and he 
proposed a showdown which I cordially endorsed. As the 
British won't go through with what they agreed to, we will 
turn our backs on them and take up the war with Japan." 
(Diary, July 10, 1942) 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 425 

Although this drastic threat was designed mainly as a plan 
to bring the British into agreement with BOLERO, Stimson in 
retrospect was not altogether pleased with his part in it; he 
thought it a rather hasty proposal which showed how sorely 
the patience of the Americans had been tried by constant ap- 
peals for reconsideration. Although the bluff was supported 
by the British Chiefs of Staff in Washington, who had been 
converted to BOLERO, it did not appeal to the President. "The 
President asserted that he himself was absolutely sound on 
BOLERO which must go ahead unremittingly, but he did not 
like the manner of the memorandum [a further paper from 
Marshall, King, and Arnold] in regard to the Pacific, saying 
that was a little like 'taking up your dishes and going away.' 
I told him that I appreciated the truth in that but it was 
absolutely essential to use it as a threat of our sincerity in 
regard to BOLERO if we expected to get through the hides of 
the British and he agreed to that." (Diary, July 15, 1942) 

Mr. Roosevelt was not persuaded, and the bluff was never 
tried. It would not have worked in any case, for there was no 
real intention of carrying it out, and Stimson supposed that 
the British knew this as well as he did. Furthermore, Stimson 
knew that the President had a lingering predilection for the 
Mediterranean, and the Prime Minister had shown on his last 
visit that he too knew the President's feeling; back on June 21 
he "had taken up GYMNAST, knowing full well I am sure that 
it was the President's great secret baby." In spite of Mr. 
Roosevelt's renewed assurances of his support for BOLERO, 
therefore, it was with considerable concern that Stimson 
watched Hopkins, Marshall, and King leave for London to 
undertake a final series of discussions on Anglo-American 
strategy for 1942. He was not surprised although very deeply 
disappointed when these discussions resulted in a decision to 
launch a North African attack in the autumn. GYMNAST, re- 
baptized TORCH, replaced BOLERO. 

The TORCH decision was the result of two absolutely definite 
and final rulings, one by the British, and the other by the 
President. Mr. Churchill and his advisers categorically re- 
fused to accept the notion of a cross-Channel invasion in 1942. 
Mr. Roosevelt categorically insisted that there must be some 



426 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

operation in 1942. The only operation that satisfied both of 
these conditions was TORCH. Stimson admitted that there was 
considerable force in both of these rulings. His own interest 
in BOLERO had never blinded him to the dangers of SLEDGE- 
HAMMER, the 1942 version of that operation. On the other 
hand, he could understand that for many reasons it was im- 
portant that American troops should come to grips with the 
German enemy somewhere, as soon as possible. 

But in July, 1942, neither of these considerations seemed to 
him as important as the fact that TORCH would obviously force 
an indefinite postponement of effective action in the only deci- 
sive theater outside Russia, and he pushed his disagreement 
with the President to the limits prescribed by loyalty. Again 
and again he emphasized the unwelcome fact that TORCH de- 
stroyed BOLERO even for 1943. The July agreement paid lip 
service to the build-up in Britain, but an operation in execu- 
tion will always take priority over one merely in contempla- 
tion, especially when the one in contemplation is not viewed 
with a friendly eye by one-half of the team. 

Stimson's disapproval of TORCH was fully shared by the 
War Department staff, but after a final protest to the Pres- 
ident on July 24, during which the two men offered to bet 
each other about the wisdom of the operation, Stimson limited 
himself to extracting a promise from Marshall that he would 
make a stand against the final execution of the operation if at 
any time "it seemed clearly headed for disaster." (Diary, 
August 10, 1942) This time never came, for with his usual 
skill and energy Marshall organized the Army's part of the 
operation to a point at which he was himself prepared to en- 
dorse it. TORCH had what BOLERO had never had, the enthu- 
siastic support of the highest authorities, and it was therefore 
possible to give it priorities and exclusive rights with the kind 
of ruthlessness that Stimson had so ardently and fruitlessly 
urged for BOLERO. 

Confessing his doubts only to Marshall, Stimson too gave 
his full support to the prosecution of TORCH. "We are em- 
barked on a risky undertaking but it is not at all hopeless and, 
the Commander in Chief having made the decision, we must 
do our best to make it a success." (Diary, September 17, 1942) 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 427 

He was particularly delighted with the selection of his old 
friend George Patton to command the Casablanca landing 
force; Patton's realistic appreciation of the dangers ahead 
was matched by his burning determination to overcome them. 
The work of the General Staff in preparation Stimson con- 
sidered admirable; so far as possible the dangers he foresaw 
were minimized. But, as he had feared, the necessary shipping 
and air support for TORCH were obtained at the expense of the 
BOLERO build-up in Great Britain. 

In October and November there occurred two great and 
unforeseen events which still further reduced the dangers of 
TORCH. One was the successful Russian stand at Stalingrad. 
The shift of the Russians from the defense to a massive coun- 
terattack, in the following weeks, finally banished the specter 
of a German victory in Russia, which had haunted the council 
table of the Western Allies for a year and a half. At the same 
time, in the battle of Alamein, the British Eighth Army 
achieved a definitive victory over the Afrika Korps. To these 
two major areas Hitler was forced to give new attention, and 
the prospect of a counterattack through Spain against TORCH 
was diminished. Stimson nevertheless continued to be greatly 
concerned with the dangers of such a riposte to the North 
African attack, and through the early weeks of the invasion he 
lent his weight to the provision of adequate protective forces 
opposite Gibraltar. But the attack through Spain did not de- 
velop. Providential and unexpected good weather at Casa- 
blanca speeded that critical landing, and the heavy submarine 
and air losses which had been anticipated did not occur. Stim- 
son always considered TORCH the luckiest Allied operation of 
the war, but he was prepared to admit that those who had 
advocated the operation could not be expected to see it in that 
light; the President had won his bet. 

The tactical success of TORCH does not of itself dispose of 
the broader questions of strategy which lay behind the dif- 
ference between the War Department and the President. The 
great commitment in North Africa led inexorably to later 
operations in the Mediterranean theater which were certainly 
a great contribution to victory; equally certainly these opera- 
tions were unimportant in comparison with the land and air 



42 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

offensive finally launched from Great Britain. If Stimson or 
Marshall had been Commander in Chief, the invasion of 
France would in all probability have been launched in 1943, 
one year earlier than it actually occurred. Would the war 
have been ended sooner? This is a problem in a dozen un- 
knowns. No certain answer is possible, and the matter is here 
left open. All that Stimson could say was that if he were faced 
with the problems of 1942, he would argue again as he had 
then. 

2. THE GREAT DECISION 

As the North African campaign progressed, the joint opera- 
tions of the British and American forces led to increasing daily 
co-operation and understanding in the higher echelons, but 
the basic differences in strategy remained. At Casablanca in 
January, 1943, the British again refused to go ahead with any 
cross-Channel operation in the coming year, and it was there- 
fore agreed that the next great move would be to Sicily, in a 
campaign whose name was HUSKY. In May, at Washington, 
there was made the first of three binding decisions to launch 
a cross-Channel invasion in 1944. For the first time the Pres- 
ident himself took the stand for which Stimson had argued a 
year before he insisted that the first problem was to plan the 
landing in northern France ; when that had been done, it would 
be possible to see what supplies and troops were available 
for other operations. The Prime Minister finally accepted 
this position, although part of his price was that General 
Marshall should be assigned to him for a tour of North Africa 
ruefully Marshall remarked that he seemed to be merely a 
piece of baggage useful as a trading point. Stimson suspected 
that his wily English friend, knowing that in Marshall he 
faced the most powerful single advocate of the Channel at- 
tack, was hoping to -convert him to the Mediterranean, but 
he knew that the Prime Minister was also indulging his great 
respect and affection for General Marshall. And he was not 
surprised to find that Marshall returned safe, and uncon- 
verted, to the Pentagon. 

Thus in midsummer, 1943, it was understood that there 
should be a cross-Channel attack in 1944. A staff was at work 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 429 

in London planning this attack, which was to have a British 
supreme commander. Meanwhile the invasion of Sicily had 
begun on July 10, and the question of further Mediterranean 
operations was still under debate. This was the situation when 
Stimson arrived in England, on the first of his three wartime 
visits to the European theater. What happened there is best 
described in his report of August 4, 1943, to the President. 
This report records Stimson's side of a prolonged debate with 
Mr. Churchill, from which he returned to Washington with 
more definite ideas than ever about the necessity of fighting 
hard for a cross-Channel invasion in 1944. The term used at 
the tifne by Stimson for this invasion was ROUNDHAMMER. 
(Its official name had become OVERLORD, but Stimson pre- 
ferred not to mention this new name in his reports. OVERLORD 
was the final na'me for the invasion when executed.) The re- 
port to Mr. Roosevelt was outspoken, and it must be remem- 
bered that this paper, like all of Stimson's comments in this 
period, was predicated on the assumption that differences 
with the British were differences between friends. 

"My principal objective had been to visit troops. But when 
I reached London the P.M. virtually took possession of my 
movements for the first week and I found myself launched in 
the discussion of subjects and with people which I had not 
expected. These unexpected subjects were so important that 
I devoted the bulk of my time to their consideration and 
altered my trip accordingly. 

"Although I have known the P.M. for many years and had 
talked freely with him, I have never had such a series of 
important and confidential discussions as this time. He was 
extremely kind and, although we discussed subjects on which 
we differed with extreme frankness, I think the result was to 
achieve a relation between us of greater mutual respect and 
friendship than ever before. I know that was the case on my 
side. Although I differed with him with the utmost freedom 
and outspokenness, he never took offense and seemed to re- 
spect my position. At the end I felt that I had achieved a 
better understanding with him than ever before. . . . 

"I told him that the American people did not hate the 
Italians but took them rather as a joke as fighters ; that only 



430 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

by an intellectual effort had they been convinced that Ger- 
many was their most dangerous enemy and should be disposed 
of before Japan; that the enemy whom the American people 
really hated, if they hated anyone, was Japan which had dealt 
them a foul blow. After setting out all the details upon which 
my conclusion was predicated, I asserted that it was my con- 
sidered opinion that, if we allow ourselves to become so en- 
tangled with matters of the Balkans, Greece, and the Middle 
East that we could not fulfill our purpose of ROUNDHAMMER 
in 1944, that situation would be a serious blow to the prestige 
of the President's war policy and therefore to the interests of 
the United States. 

"The P.M. apparently had not had that matter presented 
to him in that light before. He had no answer to it except that 
any such blow could be cured by victories. I answered that 
that would not be so if the victories were such that the people 
were not interested in and could not see any really strategic 
importance for them. Towards the end he confined his posi- 
tion to favoring a march on Rome with its prestige and the 
possibility of knocking Italy out of the war. Eden on the other 
hand continued to contend for carrying the war into the 
Balkans and Greece. At the end the P.M. reaffirmed his fi- 
delity to the pledge of ROUNDHAMMER 'unless his military 
advisers could present him with some better opportunity' not 
yet disclosed. . . . 

"On Thursday, July i5th, I called at the office which had 
been set up to prepare plans for ROUNDHAMMER under Lt 
Gen. Morgan of the British Army as Chief of Staff and Maj. 
Gen. Ray W. Barker of the U.S.A. as his deputy. ... I was 
much impressed with General Morgan's directness and sin- 
cerity. He gave us his mature opinion on the operation, with 
carefully stated provisos, to the effect that he believed that 
with the present allocated forces it could be successfully ac- 
complished. He was very frank, however, in stating his fear 
of delays which might be caused by getting too deep into 
commitments in the Mediterranean. . . . Barker who ex- 
plained the details of the plan to us shared the same fear. In 
other words, they both felt that the plan was sound and safe 
but there might be a subsequent yielding to temptation to 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 431 

undertake new activities which would interfere with the long 
stage of preparation in the false hope that such interference 
could be atoned for by subsequent speeding up. 

"During the fortnight that I spent in England I found the 
same fear pervaded our own officers who were engaged in 
ROUNDHAMMER preparations. . . . They were all confident that 
the plan was feasible. On one particular danger which the 
P.M. had frequently urged upon me, namely the fear of a 
successful German counterattack after the landing had been 
made, the airmen were confident that they could by their 
overwhelming superiority in the air block the advances of the 
German reinforcements and thus defeat the counterattack. 
The matter had been carefully studied by them. They told me 
that their confidence was shared by the officers of the RAF. . . . 

"I saw the P.M. again at a dinner given by Devers on 
Wednesday where I sat beside him, and again on Saturday I 
was with him nearly all day when he took me to Dover with 
a smaller family party in his special train. . . . During the 
trip back he brought me with evident delight a telegram which 
he had just received from the Combined Chiefs of Staff in 
Washington, telling him that General Marshall had proposed 
that a study be made of the operation known as AVALANCHE. 
[This was the landing executed in the following September 
at Salerno on the west coast of Italy near Naples.] He took 
this as an endorsement by Marshall of his whole Italian policy 
and was greatly delighted. I pointed out to him that it prob- 
ably meant that Marshall had proposed this as a short cut 
intended to hasten the completion of the Italian adventure 
so that there would be no danger of clashing with the prepara- 
tions for ROUNDHAMMER. . . . 

"On Monday, July 19, I talked over the new telephone with 
Marshall and found that my assumption of Marshall's posi- 
tion was correct and that he had only suggested AVALANCHE so 
as to leave more time for ROUNDHAMMER and to obviate the 
danger of a long slow progress 'up the leg' [of Italy] which 
might eliminate ROUNDHAMMER altogether. I told him also 
of my talks with the P.M. and with the other military men, 
including particularly Morgan, and at the close of my state- 
ment he suggested to me that I should go as promptly as possi- 



432 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ble to Africa to see Eisenhower, where I should be able to 
round out what I had gotten in London with the views of the 
people in Africa. He said, 'Then you will have all sides and I 
think it is very important for you to go and to go quickly. 1 
Information which I subsequently received from the P.M. as 
to his proposed early visit to America caused me to under- 
stand why Marshall urged haste. . . . 

"I told the P.M. of my talk with Marshall and his confir- 
mation of my interpretation of his support of AVALANCHE, 
namely that he favored it only for the purpose of expediting 
the march up the peninsula and that he was still as firmly in 
favor of ROUNDHAMMER as ever. I pointed out to the P.M. 
that Marshall's view as to ROUNDHAMMER had always been 
supported by the whole Operations Division of the American 
General Staff. I also told him of my talk with Generals Mor- 
gan and Barker and- of their full support of the ROUNDHAM- 
MER proposition. 

"He at once broke out into a new attack upon ROUNDHAM- 
MER. The check received by the British attack at Catania, 
Sicily, during the past few days had evidently alarmed him. 
He referred to it and praised the superlative fighting ability 
of the Germans. He said that if he had fifty thousand men 
ashore on the French Channel coast, he would not have an 
easy moment because he would feel that the Germans could 
rush up sufficient forces to drive them back into the sea. He 
repeated assertions he had made to me in previous conversa- 
tions as to the disastrous effect of having the Channel full of 
corpses of defeated allies. This stirred me up and for a few 
minutes we had it hammer and tongs. I directly charged him 
that he was not in favor of the ROUNDHAMMER operation and 
that such statements as he made were 'like hitting us in the 
eye' in respect to a project which we had all deliberately 
adopted and in which we were comrades. . . . On this he said 
that, while he admitted that if he was C-in-C he would not set 
up the ROUNDHAMMER operation, yet having made his pledge 
he would go through with it loyally. I then told him that, 
while I did not at all question the sincerity of his promise to 
go with us, I was afraid he did not make sufficient allowance 
for the necessary long-distance planning and I feared that 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 433 

fatal curtailments might be made impulsively in the vain hope 
that those curtailments could be later repaid. I stressed the 
dangers of too great entanglement in an Italian expedition and 
the loss of time to ROUNDHAMMER which it would involve. 
He then told me that he was not insisting on going further 
than Rome unless we should by good luck obtain a complete 
Italian capitulation throwing open the whole of Italy as far as 
the north boundary. He asserted that he was not in favor of 
entering the Balkans with troops but merely wished to supply 
them with munitions and supplies. He told me that they were 
now doing magnificently when only being supplied ten tons a 
month. (Note: In these limitations he thus took a more con- 
servative position than Eden had taken at the dinner on 
July 12.) 

"When I parted with him, I felt that, if pressed by us, he 
would sincerely go ahead with the ROUNDHAMMER commit- 
ment but that he was looking so constantly and vigorously for 
an easy way of ending the war without a trans-Channel assault 
that, if we expected to be ready for a ROUNDHAMMER which 
would be early enough in 1944 to avoid the dangers of bad 
weather, we must be constantly on the lookout against Medi- 
terranean diversions. I think it was at this meeting that he 
told me of his intention of coming to America and that he ex- 
pected to come in the first half of August. I then understood 
what Marshall had meant in his telephone message as to the 
promptness on my part and I thereafter aimed my movements 
so as to be able to return to America in time to report to the 
President before such meeting." 

From England Stimson flew to Africa to consult General 
Eisenhower, so as to have a clear understanding of the present 
potentialities of the Mediterranean theater. There he found 
that Eisenhower, in agreement with American officers in Lon- 
don and Washington, was in favor of a limited attack on Italy, 
having for its main object the capture of air bases in the Fog- 
gia area which were vitally needed for the prosecution of the 
air offensive against Germany; the air forces based in Great 
Britain were finding themselves severely limited by their 
distance from southeastern Germany and by the adverse 



434 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

weather conditions of the British Isles. In Stimson's report 
on this view he concluded : 

"Such a project if feasible would not only not impair 
ROUNDHAMMER but it would greatly aid and facilitate it and 
would have the maximum advantage in effect upon Germany 
both psychologically and materially. 

"This conception of the American staff of an Italian opera- 
tion is entirely different from the conception put forward at 
times to me by the P.M. and Eden and also made by certain 
others, notably General Smuts in a letter to the P.M. This 
last, which for brevity I will call the British conception, is 
not put forward as an aid to ROUNDHAMMER but as a substitute 
to supplant it. It contemplates an invasion from the south in 
the direction of the Balkans and Greece or possibly towards 
southern France though this last suggestion has not been 
pressed. Such a southern invasion and the ROUNDHAMMER in- 
vasion cannot be both maintained. On the contrary, if they are 
both held in contemplation, they will be in constant interfer- 
ence and will tend to neutralize each other. For example, 
under the American conception it is absolutely essential to 
have a speedy daring operation which will not draw upon or 
interfere with the mounting of ROUNDHAMMER. A slow pro- 
gressive infiltration of the Italian boot from the bottom, time 
consuming and costly, would be sure to make ROUNDHAMMER 
impossible. 

"The main thing therefore to keep constantly in mind is 
that the Italian effort must be strictly confined to the objective 
of securing bases for an air attack and there must be no further 
diversions of forces or materiel which will interfere with the 
coincident mounting of the ROUNDHAMMER project." 

This memorandum of August 4 was sent to Harry Hopkins 
for delivery to the President at Shangri-La, Mr. Roosevelt's 
place of escape from Washington. Stimson went to Highhold 
for three days of rest. The President sent him a message that 
he had read it and "would see me as soon as he returned to 
Washington." Back at the Pentagon, Stimson received word 
"that he would see me tomorrow, Tuesday, at lunch. In order 
to prepare for my talk with him I invited Harry Hopkins 
over to lunch and talked over with him my memorandum, 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 435 

which he had read and also my conclusion. ... I was very 
much interested to find as I went over with Harry Hopkins 
the suggestions in my own mind that he agreed with every step 
and with my final conclusion." (Diary, August 9, 1943) 

The diary entry for the next day is as follows : 

"Last night was the hottest night that I can ever recall in 
Woodley and I did not sleep very well as a consequence, par- 
ticularly as I was tired with the hard day. 

"Nevertheless I got up and dictated immediately after 
breakfast a proposed report of my conclusions on the events 
stated in the memorandum which I had already sent to the 
President. I decided that it would be better to present them to 
the President in writing. The decisions that I have recom- 
mended are among the most serious that I have had to make 
since I have been in this Department and I have found that 
a good written report gets further and lasts longer than a 
verbal conference with the President. It was hard work grind- 
ing my mind down to the summary of such important matters 
when I was feeling as tired as I was this morning. Neverthe- 
less I managed to do it." 

Later in the morning, when these recommendations had 
been typed as a letter to the President, "I read them over and 
signed it. Then I called in Marshall and let him read them, 
telling him that that was going to be my report to the Presi- 
dent and I wanted him to know what I was going to say in 
case he had any serious objections to it. He said he had none 
but he did not want to have it appear that I had consulted him 
about it. I told him that for that very reason I had signed the 
paper before I showed it to him or anyone else and that I pro- 
posed to send it in unless there was some vital objection which 
I had been unable to conjure up myself. . . . 

"Then at one o'clock I went to the White House and had 
one of the most satisfactory conferences I have ever had with 
the President. He was very cordial and insisted on hearing 
about my trip. Then we plunged into the ROUNDHAMMER 
matter and, after recalling to his memory some of the matters 
which were in my memorandum and which as a whole he had 
very thoroughly in his mind, I produced my letter of conclu- 



436 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

sions and handed it over to him and told him that I thought 
that was better than my trying to explain verbally," 



August 10, 1943. 
Dear Mr. President: 

In my memorandum of last week, which was intended to be 
as factual as possible, I did not include certain conclusions to 
which I was driven by the experiences of my trip. For a year 
and a half they have been looming more and more clearly 
through the fog of our successive conferences with the British. 
The personal contacts, talks, and observations of my visit 
made them very distinct. 

First: We cannot now rationally hope to be able to cross the 
Channel and come to grips with our German enemy under a 
British commander. His. Prime Minister and his Chief of the 
Imperial Staff are frankly at variance with such a proposal. 
The shadows of Passchendaele and Dunkerque still hang too 
heavily over the imagination of these leaders of his govern- 
ment Though they have rendered lip service to the operation, 
their hearts are not in it and it will require more independ- 
ence, more faith, and more vigor than it is reasonable to expect 
we can find in any British commander to overcome the natural 
difficulties of such an operation carried on in such an atmos- 
phere of his government. There are too many natural obstacles 
to be overcome, too many possible side avenues of diversion 
which are capable of stalling and thus thwarting such an op- 
eration. 

Second: The difference between us is a vital difference of 
faith. The American staff believes that only by massing the 
immense vigor and power of the American and British nations 
under the overwhelming mastery of the air, which they al- 
ready exercise far into the north of France and which can be 
made to cover our subsequent advance in France just as it has 
in Tunis and Sicily, can Germany be really defeated and the 
war brought to a real victory. 

On the other side, the British theory (which cropped out 
again and again in unguarded sentences of the British leaders 
with whom I have just been talking) is that Germany can be 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 437 

beaten by a series of attritions in northern Italy, in the eastern 
Mediterranean, in Greece, in the Balkans, in Rumania and 
other satellite countries. . . . 

To me, in the light of the postwar problems which we shall 
face, that attitude . . . seems terribly dangerous. We are 
pledged quite as clearly as Great Britain to the opening of a 
real second front. None of these methods of pinprick warfare 
can be counted on by us to fool Stalin into the belief that we 
have kept that pledge. 

Third : I believe therefore that the time has come for you 
to decide that your government must assume the responsibility 
of leadership in this great final movement of the European 
war which is now confronting us. We cannot afford to confer 
again and close with a lip tribute to BOLERO which we have 
tried twice and failed to carry out. We cannot afford to begin 
the most dangerous operation of the war under halfhearted 
leadership which will invite failure or at least disappointing 
results. Nearly two years ago the British offered us this com- 
mand. I think that now it should be accepted if necessary, 
insisted on. 

We are facing a difficult year at home with timid and hostile 
hearts ready to seize and exploit any wavering on the part of 
our war leadership. A firm resolute leadership, on the other 
hand, will go far to silence such voices. The American people 
showed this in the terrible year of 1864, when the firm unfal- 
tering tactics of the Virginia campaign were endorsed by the 
people of the United States in spite of the hideous losses of 
the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor. 

Finally, I believe that the time has come when we must put 
our most commanding soldier in charge of this critical opera- 
tion at this critical time. You are far more fortunate than was 
Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Wilson in the ease with which that selec- 
tion can be made. Mr. Lincoln had to fumble through a proc- 
ess of trial and error with dreadful losses until he was able 
to discover the right choice. Mr. Wilson had to choose a man 
who was virtually unknown to the American people and to 
the foreign armies with which he was to serve. General 
Marshall already has a towering eminence of reputation as a 
tried soldier and as a broad-minded and skillful administra- 



438 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tor. This was shown by the suggestion of him on the part of 
the British for this very post a year and a half ago. I believe 
that he is the man who most surely can now by his character 
and skill furnish the military leadership which is necessary to 
bring our two nations together in confident joint action in this 
great operation. No one knows better than I the loss in the 
problems of organization and world-wide strategy centered 
in Washington which such a solution would cause, but I see 
no other alternative to which we can turn in the great effort 
which confronts us. 

Faithfully yours, 
HENRY L. STIMSON 

Secretary of War 
The President, 
The White House 



The President "read it through with very apparent interest, 
approving each step after step and saying finally that I had 
announced the conclusions which he had just come to himself. 
We discussed the matter in its many aspects and then passed 
on to" other matters, among them current negotiations about 
the atomic bomb. By the time these matters were disposed of, 
"the time had come for a conference which he was going to 
have with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he invited me to stay 
and sit in on the conference. Generals Marshall and Arnold 
and Admirals King and Leahy then came in together with 
Colonel Deane. We then had a very interesting conference on 
the subject of the coming conference with the Prime Minister 
and with the British Chiefs of Staff. The President went the 
whole hog on the subject of ROUNDHAMMER. He was more 
clear and definite than I have ever seen him since we have 
been in this war and he took the policy that the American 
staff have been fighting for fully. He was for going no further 
into Italy than Rome and then for the purpose of establishing 
bases. He was for setting up as rapidly as possible a larger 
force in Great Britain for the purpose of ROUNDHAMMER so 
that as soon as possible and before the actual time of landing 
we should have more soldiers in Britain dedicated to that 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 439 

purpose than the British. It then became evident what the 
purpose was and he announced it. He said he wanted to have 
an American commander and he thought that would make it 
easier if we had more men in the expedition at the beginning. 
I could see that the military and naval conferees were aston- 
ished and delighted at his definiteness. ... It was very interest- 
ing and satisfactory to me to find him going over with the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff the very matters which I had taken up 
with him and announcing his own support of the various 
positions which I had urged, and I came away with a very 
much lighter heart on the subject of our military policy than 
I have had for a long time. If he can only hold it through in 
the conferences which he is going to have with the Prime 
Minister, it will greatly clear up the situation." 

The President held it through. The cross-Channel attack 
had at last become wholly his own, and it developed at Que- 
bec two weeks later that the Prime Minister too was preparing 
to face the inevitable. Winston Churchill was as magnanimous 
in reconciliation as he was stubborn and eloquent in opposi- 
tion, and when Stimson was called to Quebec from his vaca- 
tion on August 22, he found that the President's scheme for 
moving troops to England had proved unnecessary. "He told 
me that Churchill had voluntarily come to him and offered to 
accept Marshall for the OVERLORD operation." In a later con- 
versation Mr. Churchill "said he had done this in spite of the 
fact that he had previously promised the position to [Field 
Marshal] Brooke and that this would embarrass him some- 
what, but he showed no evidence of retreating from his sug- 
gestion to the President. I was of course greatly cheered 
up. . . ." (Diary notes on vacation trip, August, 1943) 

The decisions of Quebec were not quite final, but from this 
time onward OVERLORD held the inside track. There were 
further alarms from the Prime Minister during the Moscow 
Conference of Foreign Ministers in October, and in Novem- 
ber at Teheran he made a last great effort to urge the impor- 
tance of operations in the eastern Mediterranean, even at the 
cost of delay in OVERLORD. But at Teheran the President was 
reinforced by the blunt firmness of Marshal Stalin, whose 
comments on the doubts and diversionary suggestions of Mr. 



440 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Churchill Stimson followed in the minutes of the meetings 
with great interest. OVERLORD became at last a settled commit- 
ment, and in his press conference on December 9 Stimson al- 
lowed himself the following comment: 

"The principal event of the past week has been the confer- 
ence at Teheran. I have received and carefully studied the 
minutes of the military discussions and the records of the deci- 
sions at that conference. While, of course, the nature and 
details of those decisions cannot be made public, I can say that 
the presence of Premier Stalin and of his companion at the 
conference, Marshal Voroshilov, has contributed mightily to 
the success of the conference. Marshal Stalin's power of lucid 
analysis and the fairness of his attitude contributed strongly 
to the solution of several long-standing problems." 

It was after Teheran, at Cairo, that the question of the su- 
preme commander for OVERLORD was finally settled. It had 
been understood since Quebec that this commander should 
be an American, but objections had arisen in the United States 
to the selection of General Marshall. The news of his prospec- 
tive appointment leaked to the press and persons eager to dis- 
credit the administration claimed that it was a British plot to 
remove his influence from the central direction of the war. 
Others dared to suggest that he was being sent away from 
Washington so that the President could replace him with 
General Somervell and insure the use of Army contracts to 
support his campaign for re-election. To this suggestion, an 
outrageous libel against all concerned, Stimson promptly gave 
a stern denial, but it was not so easy to quiet those who sin- 
cerely felt that Marshall was indispensable as Chief of Staff. 
None of this questioning would have been important if it had 
arisen after a definite announcement of Marshall's new posi- 
tion, for the enormous significance of his duties as supreme 
commander would then have been concrete and self-evident, 
not merely potential. But, as it was, Stimson could see that the 
President was disturbed. 

Nor was the matter made easier by Marshall's own attitude. 
His sensitive personal integrity kept him completely silent 
about the question. Except on one occasion when Stimson 
drove him to a reluctant admission that 'any soldier would 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 441 

prefer a field command,' he firmly refused to discuss the mat- 
ter and the President was therefore cut off from the counsel 
of the man whose advice he had learned to accept without 
hesitation on all major Army appointments. Feeling himself 
at least in part the originator of the move to make Marshall 
supreme commander, Stimson did what he could to help the 
President to a final conclusion. He even urged that Mr. Roose- 
velt might persuade the British to accept Marshall as com- 
mander of both the European and the Mediterranean theaters ; 
but the British, like the Americans, had public opinion to deal 
with, and this plan proved impracticable. Furthermore, 
Marshall's appointment would involve complex readjustments 
of the command in other theaters and there remained the diffi- 
cult problem of selecting a man to act in his place as Chief of 
Staff. When the President departed for Teheran, the matter 
was still unsettled. 

Marshal Stalin emphatically stated at Teheran that he 
could not consider the OVERLORD promise definite until a su- 
preme commander had been appointed, and under this spur 
the President reached his decision in a meeting with Marshall 
at Cairo. Stimson learned from the cables what the President 
finally decided, but he did not hear the full story until Mr. 
Roosevelt returned to Washington. On December 18 he had 
lunch with the President and received a detailed account of 
the matter. 

"He described his luncheon with Marshall after the con- 
ference was over and they had returned to Cairo. He let drop 
the fact, which I had supposed to be true, that Churchill 
wanted Marshall for the commander and had assumed that it 
was settled as, in fact, it had been agreed on in Quebec. The 
President described, however, how he reopened this matter 
with Marshall at their solitary luncheon together and tried 
to get Marshall to tell him whether he preferred to hold the 
command of OVERLORD (now that a general supreme com- 
mander was not feasible) or whether he preferred to remain as 
Chief of Staff. He was very explicit in telling me that he urged 
Marshall to tell him which one of the two he personally pre- 
ferred, intimating that he would be very glad to give him the 
one that he did. He said that Marshall stubbornly refused, 



442 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

saying that it was for the President to decide and that he, 
Marshall, would do with equal cheerfulness whichever one 
he was selected for. The President said that he got the impres- 
sion that Marshall was not only impartial between the two but 
perhaps really preferred to remain as Chief of Staff. Finally, 
having been unable to get him to tell his preference, the Pres- 
ident said that he decided on a mathematical basis that if Mar- 
shall took OVERLORD it would mean that Eisenhower would 
become Chief of Staff but, while Eisenhower was a very good 
soldier and familiar with the European Theater, he was un- 
familiar with what had been going on in the Pacific and he 
also would be far less able than Marshall to handle the Con- 
gress ; that, therefore, he, the President, decided that he would 
be more comfortable if he kept Marshall at his elbow in Wash- 
ington and turned over OVERLORD to Eisenhower. I thanked 
him for his frank narration of the facts. I said that frankly I 
was staggered when I heard of the change for I thought that 
the other arrangement was thoroughly settled at Quebec. I 
said that I had chosen to recommend Marshall in my letter to 
the President last summer for two reasons : first, because I was 
confident that he was our best man for OVERLORD and he would 
be able to push through the operation in spite of the obstacles 
and delays which I felt certain it would meet in Great Britain 
on account of the attitude of the Prime Minister and the Brit- 
ish Staff; but, secondly, I said that I knew that in the bottom 
of his heart it was Marshall's secret desire above all things to 
command this invasion force into Europe; that I had had very 
hard work to wring out of Marshall that this was so, but I had 
done so finally beyond the possibility of misunderstanding, 
and I said, laughingly, to the President: 'I wish I had been 
along with you in Cairo. I could have made that point clear.' 
And I told the President that, like him, I had had great diffi- 
culty in getting Marshall to speak on such a subject of his 
personal preference, but that I had finally accomplished it and 
that when he was on the point of leaving for this Teheran 
conference I had begged him not to sacrifice what I considered 
the interests of the country to the undue sensitiveness of his 
own conscience in seeming to seek a post." (Diary, December 
18, 1943) 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 443 

The appointment of Eisenhower was a disapp lent to 
Stimson, but only in that it was not the appointm' f Mar- 
shall. This feeling he promptly explained in a letter to the new 
supreme commander in order that there might be no shadow 
of misunderstanding; he assured Eisenhower of his confident 
and wholehearted support and received a reply of disarming 
sincerity: 

"I have always agreed with, you that General Marshall was 
the logical choice to do the OVERLORD job, but as long as it has 
been assigned to me you need have no fear but that I will do 
my best. It is heartening indeed to have your expression of 
confidence." 

As for Marshall himself, never by any sign did he show 
that he was not wholly satisfied with the President's decision. 
It seemed indeed quite possible that Marshall had himself 
independently concluded that whatever his desires, his duty 
lay in Washington, and that he had refused to say so to the 
President or to Stimson because any such claim would have 
seemed immodest it would have been as unlike Marshall as 
the contrary course of seeking field command. Many times in 
the war Stimson had cause to wonder at the quality of this 
American, but perhaps no other incident showed more clearly 
his utter selflessness. As Stimson had remarked in speaking of 
him a year before, the proverb truly applied: "He that ruleth 
his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." 

Events confirmed the President's judgment. General Eisen- 
hower fully justified the confidence placed in him, and Gen- 
eral Marshall continued to serve in Washington as only he 
could do. By the middle of June, 1944, Stimson was happy to 
acknowledge to his diary that the two men were in the right 
place after all. 

The decisions of Cairo and Teheran ended two years of dis- 
cussion. At their meeting of December 18 the President had 
remarked to Stimson, "I have thus brought OVERLORD back to 
you safe and sound on the ways for accomplishment." And so 
it proved. Occasionally during the months that followed Stim- 
son felt concern lest continued British caution might adversely 
affect the operation, but events belied his fears. When the time 



444 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

came in the following summer to mount the supporting inva- 
sion of southern France, there was one further contest with 
British advocates of a Balkan operation, but in this Stimson 
was only a satisfied observer of the firmness of the President 
and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His major part in Operation 
OVERLORD had come to its victorious ending six months before 
the English Channel was crossed. 

Through those six months the men in the War Department 
waited with a growing sense of tense anticipation. The game 
for them was now afoot, and they knew that OVERLORD would 
be a full test of their Army. They had argued for this cam- 
paign in the conviction that a properly equipped and well- 
trained Army could fight on equal terms with the best forces 
of an experienced enemy in its first battle most of the divi- 
sions in the invasion would have no previous experience. More 
than that, the whole theory of victory by ground force superi- 
ority supported by air mastery was one in which the War 
Department had been a lonely advocate. The victories of 
North Africa and Italy had not dispelled the caution with 
which many Allied officers looked at the new American Army, 
nor were there many Americans outside the General Staff and 
the Ground Forces who wholeheartedly believed that the 
Army could produce explosive victories against the battle- 
tested Germans. In 1947, when the great American victories 
of the OVERLORD campaign were history, it seemed important 
to Stimson to recall that the Army which won those victories 
was born of George Marshall's faith, trained under Leslie 
McNair in the great maneuver grounds of the United States, 
and commanded by generals few of whom had commanded 
troops in battle anywhere before D-day. 

It was no wonder, then, that as the eyes of all the world 
turned toward the English Channel in the spring of 1944, the 
senior officers of the War Department waited with especial 
anxiety for news from the Supreme Commander. What they 
heard needs no retelling here the unprecedented sweep 
across France in the summer of 1944 is recognized as one of 
the great campaigns of all military history. 

As the anxiety of the last days before the landing gave way 
to cautious satisfaction at its first success, and to full confi- 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 445 

dence after the first great victory at Cherbourg, Stimson real- 
ized that OVERLORD was destined to succeed, and he gave him- 
self the satisfaction of going over to see it for himself. In a 
flying visit to England and Normandy in mid-July, he saw 
in action the magnificent forces of General Eisenhower and 
stood in wonder, like any private soldier, at the colossal scope 
of the undertaking, with its vast bases in Great Britain, its 
great fleets and beehive beaches on the other side, its over- 
whelming air support, its first-rate fighting troops, and above 
all its calm and supremely competent field leadership. At 
General Bradley's headquarters he heard the plan that later 
exploded the American Third Army through the enemy lines 
to clear the way for the liberation of all France, and, observing 
the troops and equipment which packed the narrow Cotentin 
Peninsula, he knew that Bradley had what he needed for the 
execution of this bold and brilliant plan. The brief visit with 
its sharply etched impressions was a clear demonstration to 
Stimson that in his unwearied assertion of the powers of the 
fresh and vigorous American Army he had, if anything, un- 
derstated his case. It was not often that a man could see so 
clearly as a triumphant fact what he had argued as a theory 
not many months before. In England Stimson exchanged con- 
gratulations with his friend and former adversary, the Prime 
Minister. 'It is wonderful, a great triumph,' said the P.M., 
and Stimson did not see any need to quarrel when Mr. Church- 
ill added, 'But we could never have done it last year.' 

The foregoing account represents with complete frankness 
Stimson's part in the long deliberations which reached their 
climax in the final decisions of Cairo, and their fruition in the 
year of victories which began on the following sixth of June 
in Normandy. As an important part of Stimson's life this 
account has been a necessary chapter of our book, and it has 
seemed proper not to curb or moderate the story by any retro- 
spective comment until it should be fully told. It is a story of 
persistent and deep-seated differences between partners in 
a great undertaking. Of Stimson's own share in it he found 
no reason later to be ashamed. If any advocacy of his had 



446 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

been helpful in securing the adoption of the Operation OVER- 
LORD he was proud. 

But this accomplishment would become unimportant, and 
it would be far better that it should not have been discussed, 
if the reader should conclude from the foregoing that Stimson 
considered these differences to be indicative of any basic cleav- 
age between the British and the American leaders and peoples. 
Still less would it be his wish that any small-minded conclu- 
sions should be drawn about the character or purposes of the 
greathearted and brilliant Englishman who was the leader in 
opposing the final decision. The great fact is not the differ- 
ences but their settlement, and in the execution of OVERLORD 
after Cairo there was no one more energetic or more deter- 
mined than the Prime Minister, and no one more delighted 
by its success. 

The reluctance of British leaders to accept a cross-Channel 
operation seemed far less remarkable to Stimson than the 
courage with which they finally supported it. To the British 
the Channel had been for centuries a barrier of special import, 
and if it had protected them so long, might it not now protect 
their enemies? Beyond the Channel lay France, where a gen- 
eration before the British people had paid a ghastly price of 
youth and strength in years of massive stalemate. From World 
War II there were the further painful memories of Dunkirk 
and Dieppe. The British Prime Minister had himself been a 
farsighted and incisive opponent of the bloody futility of the 
western front in 1915 and afterward; it was wholly natural 
that he should be fearful lest there be a repetition of that 
slaughter. If the Americans had suffered similar losses in the 
First World War or faced similar succeeding dangers, would 
they have felt differently? There was here no need for criti- 
cism. Americans could rest content with the fact that in their 
freshness and their vast material strength they naturally 
argued for the bold and forceful course, and in action justified 
their argument 

After the war some writers plentifully endowed with mis- 
information chose to make capital out of "revelations" of dis- 
agreement between America and Great Britain; these men 
demonstrated only their own special purposes. In America 



THE ARMY AND GRAND STRATEGY 447 

some of these writings took the shape of personal attacks on 
Mr. Churchill. These could well be left to Mr. Churchill 
himself, for that doughty warrior had never yet required help 
in defending his policies. But this much it seemed proper for 
Stimson to say: It was his considered opinion that with the 
single exception of Franklin Roosevelt no man in any country 
had been a greater factor than Mr. Churchill in the construc- 
tion of the grand alliance that destroyed the Nazis; no man 
had been quicker to leap the gulf of mutual suspicion and 
strike fellowship with Russia ; none had more steadfastly sus- 
tained the allies of his nation while remaining frankly and 
explicitly "the King's first minister" ; with no man at times 
had Stimson had sharper differences and for none had he 
higher admiration. 

One of the postwar conclusions reached by some American 
writers was that the British opposition to OVERLORD was mainly 
guided by a desire to block Soviet Russia by an invasion 
farther east. This view seemed to Stimson wholly erroneous. 
Never in any of his long and frank discussions with the Brit- 
ish leaders was any such argument advanced, and he saw no 
need whatever to assume any such grounds for the British 
position. Not only did the British have many good grounds to 
fear a cross-Channel undertaking, but Mr. Churchill had 
been for nearly thirty years a believer in what he called 
the "right hook." In 1943 he retained all his long-held stra- 
tegic convictions, combined with a natural British concern 
for the Mediterranean theater, and in Stimson's view that 
was all there was to it. 

Far more serious than any personal vilification, even of so 
great a man as Mr. Churchill, was the possibility that Amer- 
icans of good will might be unduly affected by postwar discus- 
sion of differences and disagreements between their leaders 
and the leaders of Great Britain. Naturally and inevitably 
British and American interests had frequently diverged in 
specific areas of the world and disputes on these matters had 
frequently become warm. To draw broad and bitter conclu- 
sions from such disagreements would be mean and self-right- 
eous folly. 

Stimson's disagreement with Mr. Churchill over the cross- 



448 OX ACTIVE SERVICE 

Channel invasion was not his only difference with British 
leaders during the war. Sometimes he took issue with the 
British government and sometimes with individual English- 
men, and such differences of opinion were not new to him. As 
Secretary of State he had faced similar difficulties and as a 
private observer throughout his life he found points in Brit- 
ish policy of which he could not approve. It would have been 
remarkable if it had been otherwise. But all of these differ- 
ences were trivial compared to his underlying conviction that 
the final interests of both the United States and Great Britain 
required the two nations to live together in constantly closer 
association. The re-establishment of such cordial relations had 
been his first object as Secretary of State in 1929, and in World 
War II it was only on the basis of the solid mutual confidence 
established under the pressure of a common emergency that he 
was able to be bluntly frank in his disagreements with the 
British. 

In the relationship between the British and American 
peoples Stimson found no place for pettiness. The true pur- 
poses and convictions of the two nations made it inevitable 
that they should be friends. On the basis of such friendship 
they might often frankly disagree, for it would be as unbecom- 
ing to avoid necessary disagreements as it would be foolish to 
rejoice in them. But in casting back through his thirty years of 
close relationship with the British nation it seemed to Stim- 
son that the courage and honor of the Highland Division in 
1918, the outstretched hand of Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, 
the invincible spirit of the whole nation under Churchill in 
World War II, and a score of other personal memories of 
Great Britain as a land of hope and glory and friendship 
these things, and not specific disagreements, were of final im- 
portance. 

The real lesson of World War II therefore was not to be 
found in any revelations of disagreement Franklin Roosevelt 
and Winston Churchill established and sustained a wartime 
collaboration which grew ever stronger in the settlement of 
successive differences. When all the arguments have been for- 
gotten, this central fact will remain. The two nations fought 
a single war, and their quarrels were the quarrels of brothers. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Wartime Army 



IN LATE November, 1942, after the Joint and the Combined 
Chiefs of Staff had been created and had begun to function, 
one of the less tactful hangers-on of the administration asked 
Stimson how he liked being relegated to the position of house- 
keeper for the Army. The question was a foolish one, betray- 
ing a fundamental ignorance of the functions of a Secretary of 
War; In recording Stimson's work from Pearl Harbor to 
VJ-day, only this one chapter can be given to problems of 
War Department administration. A further foolishness lay ir 
the assumption that Stimson did not like Army housekeeping^ 
or thought it unimportant. 

I. REORGANIZATION 

The first and greatest \vartime administrative achievement 
of the War Department was the reorganization made effective 
by Presidential order on March 9, 1942. In General Mar- 
shall's words, this reorganization "established three great com- 
mands under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff the 
Army Air Forces, the Army Ground Forces, and the Services 
of Supply (later designated as the Army Service Forces). 771 

Decentralization of authority was an imperative require- 
ment for effective war expansion. Whereas previously the 
chiefs of all the Army's arms and services had been largely 
autonomous officers, each with the right of direct appeal to the 
Chief of Staff, the Army inside the United States was now to 
be controlled by three officers, each clothed with full authority 

1 Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff, July i, 1943, p. 33. 

449 



450 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

within his own field. This meant, for the Air Forces, a formal 
recognition of the increased measure of autonomy which had 
been agreed on in the previous summer, for the Ground Forces 
a centralized direction of the organization and training of the 
great new armies, and for the Service Forces, a more efficient 
co-ordination of the procurement and technical employment 
of the weapons and equipment of a technological war. But to 
Stimson the most important result of all was that the reorgani- 
zation freed the General Staff for the broad duties of planning 
and supervision which were its proper assignment. 

Since it is often argued that the Army is not capable of re- 
forming itself, it is of some importance to note that Stimson's 
personal activity in this broad field of Army organization was 
more important in limiting change than in encouraging it 
Twice he used his veto power to prevent suggested changes. 
During the preparation of the reorganization of 1942 he in- 
sisted on a rigorous adherence to the traditional conception of 
the duties and authority of the Chief of Staff, and in 1943 
he prevented a further "streamlining" of the Army Service 
Forces. Both of these actions deserve attention; both origi- 
nated in Stimson's memory of the issues involved in the great 
Root reorganization of 1903. 

The title of Chief of Staff, borrowed by Root from Europe, 
was not lightly chosen ; it was a deliberate statement of the fact 
that the highest military officer of the Army exercises his 
authority only by direction of the President. The name was 
designed by Root to implant a conception of military responsi- 
bility wholly different from that which had led "Commanding 
Generals" after the Civil War to believe that they were inde- 
pendent of the ignorant whims of presidents and secretaries of 
war. To Stimson it seemed vital that this reform should not be 
jeopardized, even unintentionally, by any change in the title 
and function of the Chief of Staff in 1942, and he accordingly 
vetoed the Staff's proposal to vest the Chief of Staff with the 
title of Commander. In the case of a man like General Mar- 
shall, fully alive to his responsibility both to the Secretary of 
War and to the President, the matter was quite unimportant, 
and Stimson certainly intended no disparagement of that great 
officer. It was further obvious that in the course of his duties, 



THE WARTIME ARMY 451 

the Chief of Staff must inevitably exercise many of the func- 
tions of a commander, and Stimson was the first to insist that 
his authority must be unconditionally recognized by every 
other officer in the Army. But this authority must be that of 
the President's representative under the Constitution there 
could be only one Commander in Chief, and to recognize any 
lesser officer with such a title was either insubordination or 
flagrant misuse of language. The Army was an instrument of 
the President; there must be no repetition of the state of mind 
which had led General Sherman, as "Commanding General" 
in 1874, to move his headquarters away from the wickedness 
of Washington to St. Louis. 

The "streamlining" suggested for the Service Forces in 
1943 was a brain child of General Somervell. The changes of 
1942 had abolished the Chief of Infantry and the other chiefs 
of the arms, turning over their functions to the Commanding 
General of the Ground Forces, with a view to insuring the 
development of a fully co-ordinated training program for the 
combined arms. The chiefs of the administrative services, how- 
ever Ordnance, Quartermaster, Engineers, and so on had 
survived with most of their traditional duties intact, under the 
direction of the Commanding General of the Service Forces. 
In September, 1943, General Somervell proposed that the 
functions and prerogatives of these branches be turned over 
to a set of new directors, mostly with new names, and with 
powers organized on more functional and less traditional lines. 
At the same time he proposed a redistricting of the Army's 
nine Service Commands. Stimson was prepared in general to 
accept Somervell's judgment that his proposed changes would 
in the end increase the efficiency of the Service Forces, but it 
was a grave question whether the improvement would out- 
weigh its concomitant disadvantages in the creation of bad 
feeling. On September 21, Stimson discussed the matter with 
McCloy and Patterson. "We three had a very satisfactory talk 
about it. I have been tending to feel that this reorganization is 
ill advised . . . because it proposes to wipe out the existence of 
the administrative services such as the Engineers, the Ord- 
nance, the Quartermaster's Department, and the Signal Corps. 
. . . This proposition brings up to me poignant memories of my 



452 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

experience in 1911-12 when I learned only too well how 
deeply imbedded in sentiment the services of the Engineers, 
Ordnance, and Quartermaster are in the memories of all the 
people that belonged to them, and the tremendous uproar that 
would be 'created if we tried to destroy all that sentiment by 
wiping out the distinction of the services with their insignia, 
etc. I found in this talk with Patterson that under the present 
organization the work of production and procurement is going 
satisfactorily. Whatever critics may say, we have done an 
almost miraculous job and I therefore am prima facie against 
stirring up a hornet's nest right in the middle of a war when 
things are going well. . . . Patterson and McCloy shared my 
views." (Diary, September 21, 1943) 

The next day Stimson had the matter out in a conference 
with the soldiers, and the proposal was killed. Remembering 
his experiences in supporting Leonard Wood, "who was not 
unlike General Somervell in his temperament and other char- 
acteristics," Stimson saw no reason to create bitterness which 
could be avoided. Nor was it as if the service branches, like 
General Ainsworth in the olden time, had shown themselves 
insubordinate or un-co-operative. There had been slow and 
unimaginative work in the early days of the emergency, but 
Stimson had observed with satisfaction the high quality of the 
work done by such men as Campbell in Ordnance, and the 
Chief of Engineers and Quartermaster General were men of 
whom Somervell himself thought well enough to intend giving 
them new and enlarged responsibilities in his reorganization. 
General SomervelFs driving energy was an enormous asset to 
the Army, but in this case it seemed better that it should be 
curbed. His plans were formally disapproved in a letter writ- 
ten by Stimson on October $, and in succeeding weeks as 
belated rumors of the proposed changes began to produce a 
series of worried and disapproving questions from the Presi- 
dent, Congress, and such knowing observers as Bernard 
Baruch, Stimson was confirmed in his belief that this decision 
against "reform" had been a wise one. 



THE WARTIME ARMY 453 

2. "DIPPING DOWN" 

The reorganization of March, 1942, was the only major 
wartime change in the administrative setup of the War De- 
partment. The increased decentralization which it insured 
somewhat shifted the function of the Secretary of War, who 
retained direct control only over the Bureau of Public 
Relations and the administration of his own office. There re- 
mained, however, supervisory responsibilities which neces- 
sarily though occasionally involved Stimson in direct dealings 
with all the other branches. The principle on which he exer- 
cised these functions he explained to Somervell on May 27, 
1943. "I gave him a long discourse on my views of the duties 
of the Secretary of War based on my experience with two great 
executives Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. I 
told him I did not intend to make the mistakes which Franklin 
had made of establishing a lot of independent agencies report- 
ing only to himself ; but on the other hand I did intend to do 
what Theodore Roosevelt did, which was to feel perfectly free 
to dip down into the lower echelons, so to speak, and interest 
myself keenly and directly with what is going on in excep- 
tional cases." Giving as an example his work for the advance- 
ment of radar, Stimson assured the General, for whom he had 
the highest regard, that he had no intention of abusing this 
prerogative. Both Somervell and General Marshall fully un- 
derstood this position, and there is no record of any significant 
cleavage between the Secretary's office and the chief military 
leaders of the War Department. 

Most of the cases of such "dipping down" were of the kind 
that suggest themselves to a senior officer in a tour of inspec- 
tion ; either Stimson or someone whom he trusted would ob- 
serve a failing or apparent failing, and the result would be a 
memorandum to General Marshall or a short inquiry directed 
straight to the officer in charge of the matter. Stimson had 
been on the receiving end of inspectorial comments often 
enough to know that in many cases they were based on an 
incomplete understanding of the problem, but he also knew 
the value of such criticisms in stimulating increased efforts to 
find a satisfactory solution. 



454 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

In other cases, the activities of the Secretary were the result 
of some nonmilitary aspect of the matter. The appointment of 
a Surgeon General, or a Chief of Chaplains, for example, in- 
volved a decision in the Secretary's office because, especially 
in wartime, these offices attracted the close interest and atten- 
tion of civilian doctors and clergymen, who felt that the nor- 
mal methods of military selection could not be counted on to 
produce men with the desired standing as professionals. The 
Medical Department, furthermore, was a matter of special 
interest to Stimson on account of his personal experience in 
the tropics, and particularly after the appointment of Major 
General Norman T. Kirk, whom he had first known in the 
Philippines, he took an active part in supporting its labors. 

Another department to which Stimson's attention was given, 
in accordance with the requirements of the law, was that of the 
Judge Advocate General. As wartime pressure increased, he 
was gradually released by new statutes from much of the labor 
of reviewing court-martial records, but throughout his years 
in the War Department he was forced from time to time to 
give his close attention to specific cases, particularly those in- 
volving the death sentence. In spite of the strong tendency of 
a humane reviewing authority to exercise leniency, Stimson 
fully understood the close relationship between military jus- 
tice and military discipline ; it was not easy, for example, to 
approve the dismissal of proved combat fliers who, returning 
from battle, insisted on disregarding the safety regulations of 
the continental United States, but he cheerfully accepted Gen- 
eral Marshall's recommendation that mercy should be sub- 
ordinated to justice and the public safety. 

Another section of the War Department to which his per- 
sonal attention was frequently directed was Military Intelli- 
gence. By a curious irony, the matter of principal importance 
here was the development of the very operation of attacking 
foreign codes and ciphers which Stimson had banished from 
the State Department in 1929. In 1940 and after, the world 
was no longer in a condition to be able to act on the principle 
of mutual trust which had guided him as Secretary of State, 
and as Secretary of War he fully supported the extraordinary 
operations that were later revealed to have broken the Japa- 



THE WARTIME ARMY 455 

nese codes. In early 1942, with McCloy's assistance, he estab- 
lished a special unit for the analysis and interpretation of this 
sort of material. This unit, under the direction of Alfred Mc- 
Cormack, a New York lawyer turned colonel, did its work 
with remarkable insight and skill. As investigation of the Pearl 
Harbor catastrophe later revealed, such a unit, if it had existed 
in 1941, might well have given warning of the degree of 
Japanese interest in the fleet at Hawaii. It was not Pearl Har- 
bor, however, but the natural development of studies begun 
months before that led to the establishment of the unit, and if 
it came into existence too late to help in the prevention of that 
calamity, it made invaluable contributions in other matters of 
at least comparable significance during the war. 

Stimson also did what he could to insure the effective ex- 
change of military information among different branches of 
the Government and with America's allies, particularly the 
British. He backed General Marshall's efforts to break down 
American resistance to co-operation with the British, and he 
was insistent that no impatience with its occasional eccentric- 
ities should deprive the Army of the benefits of co-operation 
with General Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. Through- 
out the war the intelligence activities of the United States 
Government remained incompletely co-ordinated, but here 
again it was necessary to measure the benefits of reorganization 
against its dislocations, and on the whole Stimson felt that the 
American achievement in this field, measured against the con- 
ditions of 1940, was more than satisfactory. A full reorgan- 
ization belonged to the postwar period. 

3. THE PLACE OF SPECIALISTS 

Stimson inherited, from the comments of his father on the 
subject of the "bombproof" officers of the Civil War, and 
from his own experience with 'the uniform-wearing civilians 
doing morale duty in the back areas' of World War I, a strong 
feeling that the dignity of the uniform should as far as possible 
be reserved for those who in fact did the fighting. It was true 
that this conviction flew in the face of the developing com- 
plexity of war; perhaps not half of the men who served use- 



456 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

fully in the Army of World War II would have satisfied 
Dr. Lewis Stimson's definition of a genuine combatant. As one 
of those constantly urging the advantages of new weapons and 
techniques, his son was fully aware of the difference between 
Marshall's army and Grant's ; but he was also, from his own 
experience, well aware of the constant pressure exerted by men 
anxious 'to obtain the kudos of having worn a combatant uni- 
form without having performed combatant duty.' It was this 
experience that had made him lay down in 1940 a rigid set of 
requirements for appointments to commissioned rank. 

In 1942, as he observed the increasing requirement for 
wholly noncombatant specialists in military operations, Stim- 
son turned to the creation of an Army Specialist Corps, which 
should recruit for service with the Army the scientists and 
technical experts who were so much needed in all branches. 
The men of this corps were to be selected for nonmilitary 
qualifications and would serve as civilians but with military 
grades, in a uniform unlike that of the Army but designed to 
satisfy their self-respect and give them protection under the 
rules of war, if captured. Other armies, notably the German 
Army, had used and demonstrated the value of such an organ- 
ized civilian corps. 

But in the American Army the effort failed. Several months 
passed while the Specialist Corps was being formed, and 
before it was ready to carry out its assignment events had made 
that assignment impossible ; civilians had already been com- 
missioned in the Army of the United States in very large 
numbers, and the men of the Specialist Corps found them- 
selves at a hopeless ' disadvantage in comparison with these 
other civilians who were already wearing the Army uniform. 

Army commanders who needed high-class men for specialist 
civilian duty, and needed them in a hurry, 'found it so 
much easier to get them by pandering to the itch to wear 
the Army uniform that they threw their influence against the 
Specialist Corps and failed to support the effort to preserve the 
dignity of their own uniform.' In the face of this combination 
of disadvantages the greatly increased complexity of civilian 
duties in the Army, the belated organization, and the reluc- 
tance of military commanders to run the risk of losing picked 



THE WARTIME ARMY 457 

civilian aides it was decided to abandon the new organiza- 
tion and to incorporate its recruits so far as possible in the 
Army itself. 

Nevertheless the work which it had accomplished under the 
direction of a former Secretary of War, Dwight Davis, was 
far from wasted. The more than 200,000 applications it had 
processed became a useful part of the Army's file on available 
civilians. And from its experience came much of the knowl- 
edge and technique which made the Officer Procurement 
Service an outstanding success. 

With the failure of the Specialist Corps "an experiment 
noble in purpose" Stimson ended his effort to distinguish 
between combat soldiers and rear-area troops ; it was not that 
kind of war, and even a successful Specialist Corps would not 
have solved the problem. World War II saw the full develop- 
ment of the usual resentment of company for regiment, regi- 
ment for corps, corps for supply troops, and everyone overseas 
for everyone at home. But there was no denying that all of 
these resented echelons were necessary parts of the American 
Army. 

4. STUDENT SOLDIERS 

A wartime Secretary of War frequently finds himself the 
unhappy arbiter between the conflicting requirements of 
"military necessity" and "the long view." In no case during 
the war was this conflict more trying than in the com- 
plex task of adjusting the relationship of the Army to the 
colleges. 

The basic decision of 1941 had been to find the bulk of the 
junior officers for the new army inside the Army itself. To this 
position the War Department adhered throughout the war; 
for a variety of reasons it was the only satisfactory general 
principle. But as the expanding demands of the growing Army 
remorselessly reduced the draft age in gradual stages from 
twenty-one to eighteen, it became apparent that special 
arrangements must be made to provide for a proper wartime 
employment of the nation's colleges. Without yielding to the 
extreme view of some educators that college training for gen- 
eral leadership was of such pressing importance as to justify 



458 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

wholesale deferment, Stimson fully accepted the more balanced 
view of most college presidents that the values of academic 
training must not be wholly disregarded in the general mo- 
bilization of American youth. He was irritated by the apparent 
willingness of the Navy to promise commissions to selected 
students without prior service and competition in the enlisted 
ranks, but part of this annoyance stemmed from his certainty 
that in the colleges of early 1942 there was a large reservoir 
of officer material from which the Army stood in danger of 
being cut off. 

The first attempt at a solution to the problem was the 
establishment in the colleges of a program for students 
recruited into the Army Enlisted Reserve. Under this program 
college men were to be deferred as students to continue their 
studies, and upon their entry on active service they were to 
have an opportunity to compete for a commission. They were 
not, at Stimson's insistence, to be formally recognized cadets; 
they were potential, not designated, officer candidates. 

The Army Enlisted Reserve lasted only a few months. As 
the demand for men increased, it became rapidly more diffi- 
cult to justify the deferment of college students, either to 
the General Staff or to the general public. The program lacked 
justice in that it dealt kindly with men whose presence in 
college was the result largely of their happy choice of parents; 
there was no true answer to the charge that the deferment of 
such men was inconsistent with the Army's policy of demo- 
cratic selection of officers. In August, 1942, Stimson announced 
that all members of the Enlisted Reserve would be called 
to active service as soon as they reached draft age. 

There remained the colleges. Educators insisted that it was 
unwise to leave unemployed the nation's greatest engines for 
the instruction of young men of Army age, and Stimson and 
his advisers tried again. At the end of 1942 they established 
the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), under 
which selected younger soldiers of promise were to be sent, as 
soldiers, to continue at the colleges such studies as might be 
judged useful in their later military service. There was no 
connection between this training and a commission, except in 
so far as their added training might make these students more 



THE WARTIME ARMY 459 

worthy of promotion, and the very small demand for new 
officers after 1943 ' in the end prevented all but a few from 
winning bars. Many ASTP students undoubtedly felt cheated 
at this result ; they had however allowed their hopes to outrun 
the Army's promise. The novelty and breadth of this program 
made its organization and administration unusually difficult, 
but during 1943 it became gradually more and more effective. 
And then, in February, 1944, it was decided to end the pro- 
gram on the following April i. 

The ASTP was killed by the manpower shortage. At the 
end of 1943 the General Staff, finding itself in desperate need 
of additional troops for the great campaigns of the coming 
year, no longer accepted as controlling the argument that in 
the long run college training for selected men was a necessary 
investment in leadership. Although he took pains to make it 
entirely clear to the Staff that his interest in such training 
was personal and intense, Stimson himself felt unable to deny 
that the need for fighting soldiers must take precedence. The 
140,000 men in the ASTP were needed more as present effec- 
tive troops of ideal combat age than as future experts and 
officers. 

Each step of this story tied in with ups and downs in the 
Army's estimates of its manpower requirements. In all such 
changes, the college training program, as a marginal under- 
taking, was very sharply affected. Factors to which we must 
give more attention in the next chapter limited the Army to a 
choice, in the end, between specialized training and an adequate 
combatant force. It would have tjeen better to have both, but 
that would have meant fewer civilians, and a still heavier draft. 
The requirement of a sufficient fighting Army was overriding, 
but the true question for the Specialized Training Program 
was whether it should be continued at the expense of further 
drafts of fathers, deferred workers, and other civilians. Here 
the choice lay not with the War Department but with Con- 
gress, and the verdict of the people's representatives on this 
point was not a matter of doubt. The Army of early 1944 was 
forced to cannibalize itself, and the soldiers of the ASTP were 
among the first victims. Their consolation is to be found in the 



460 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

all but unanimous opinions of their new combat commanders 
they made unusually fine troops. 

Of all the dislocations of the war this one perhaps was the 
most disturbing to Stimson; on this issue of continuing college 
training he came very close to serious disagreement with 
his military staff. But there is no sensible answer to a pro- 
fessional decision on wartime troop requirements. If you 
trust your generals, you must give them the men they demand; 
Stimson had too often made that point to other citizens not 
to feel its force when applied to his own desires. When the 
President expressed his chagrin at the decision, Stimson ex- 
plained "that General Marshall had made it clear to me that 
we faced the alternative of either making this immediate cut 
in ASTP or losing ten divisions from the forces which were 
necessary this summer." 2 In the face of such a warning there 
could be no hesitation. 

Nor could Stimson sympathize with those who argued that 
a wartime suspension of academic activity would do irrepa- 
rable damage to the long future of liberal education. He was 
content to rest in 1947 on a statement issued December 17, 
1942, in defense of the military and "illiberal" curriculum of 
the ASTP: 

"In reply to the question, 'Does not the Army Educational 
Plan go a long way to destroy liberal education in America?' 
the Honorable Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, today 
authorized the following statement: 

"Temporarily, yes, so far as the able bodied men of college 
age are concerned, but in the long run, emphatically no. The 
immediate necessity is to win this war and unless we do that 
there is no hope for liberal education in this country. To win 
this war and win it as quickly as possible, we must have large 
numbers of young men in the Army. We must use every oppor- 
tunity to train our soldiers for the immediate task ahead. The 
Army College Program is designed for that purpose and for 
that purpose alone. This training is of necessity primarily 
technical and other training must remain in abeyance. 

"I am Chairman of the Trustees of one of the leading boys' 
schools and all my life I have been a devoted supporter of 

2 Notes after Cabinet meeting, February 18, 1944. 



THE WARTIME ARMY 461 

liberal education in school and college. So have my principal 
assistants, and the necessity of limiting such education in the 
colleges during the war is very painful. It has been accepted as 
a necessity. . . . 

"It is of enormous importance to make plans ahead for the 
restoration of liberal education for the period after the war is 
won and during the period of demobilization. I should like 
to call your attention to the fact that this problem is already 
under careful consideration. . . . We hope and believe that 
many of the soldiers of today will return to become tomorrow 
the students and leaders in the field of liberal education," 

So far as Stimson could see, in 1947, this was exactly what 
the soldiers were doing. 

5. THE ARMY AND THE NEGRO 

"We are suffering from the persistent legacy of the original 
crime of slavery." (Diary, January 17, 1942) There is no 
deeper or more difficult problem in America than that of the 
Negro, and the impact of this problem on the wartime Army 
(and vice versa) brought out its complexities in forms some- 
times discouraging and sometimes hopeful. 

Each man who comes in contact with "the Negro problem" 
brings to it his own deep-set beliefs. Stimson's convictions 
were those of a northern conservative born in the abolitionist 
tradition. He believed in full freedom, political and economic, 
for all men of all colors; he did not believe in the present 
desirability, for either race, of social intermixture. These 
two views were inconsistent, he believed, only in the opinion 
of those who desired them to be inconsistent. The man who 
would "keep the nigger in his place" and the man who wished 
to jump at one bound from complex reality to unattainable 
Utopia were in Stimson's opinion the twin devils of the 
situation. He had his troubles with both. 

"The persistent legacy" as it came before the War Depart- 
ment in 1940 was a complex mixture of facts and attitudes. 
It was a fact that most white people would not sanction inter- 
mixture of whites and Negroes in the intimate association 
of military life; it was equally a fact that segregation was 



462 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

repellent to almost all educated Negroes and to an increasing 
number of the colored rank and file. It was a final fact that 
segregation was the tradition of the Army, and, in one form 
or another, of most of civilian America; it was the modus 
vivendi, and the Army followed it, except in its Officer Candi- 
date Schools. 

Negro troops had not in the main won glory for themselves 
in combat during World War I. Yet certain units, under par- 
ticularly competent and sympathetic white leadership, had 
fought with distinction. Should the Army now have colored 
fighting troops? The War Department said it should, and the 
training given to Negroes in two infantry divisions and a num- 
ber of other combatant units was more patient and careful and 
time-consuming than anything required by white units. 

The Army contained Negroes in their due proportion to 
the rest of the nation's population. But wherever Negroes were 
trained or sent abroad, there was difficulty. Most training 
camps were in the South, and the South had feelings which 
seemed wholly wrong to the northern Secretary. Still more 
disturbing were its actions. A Negro in the Army was a 
United States soldier, and Stimson was deeply angered when 
it proved impossible to bring to justice southern police who 
murdered a colored M.P. Southern bus companies enforced 
the peculiar rules of the region in serving Army camps; as 
often happens under these rules, insufficient space was pro- 
vided for Negroes. Stimson insisted to his deputies that this 
sort of blatant unfairness must be stopped. 

More perplexing still was the problem of the Negro abroad. 
Theater commanders were co-operative but not enthusiastic 
in accepting Negro units ; in each theater there were special 
considerations which made Negro troops a problem. To all 
alike the Negro was an additional complication in a full-time 
war. But fair-minded soldiers agreed that the Army must 
make full use of what Stimson called the "great asset of the 
colored men of the nation. 5 ' The difficulties of the Negro were 
not, in the main, of his own making, and in neither justice nor 
policy could he be excluded from participation in the war. 

As he wrestled with the problem Stimson found his own 
sympathies shifting. On three tours of inspection he saw Negro 
units in training; each time he was impressed by the progress 



THE WARTIME ARMY 463 

achieved by intelligent white leaders and colored soldiers 
working together. In such an officer as Colonel Benjamin O. 
Davis, Jr., he found the direct refutation of the common belief 
that all colored officers were incompetent. Davis was excep- 
tional, but in the development of more such exceptions lay the 
hope of the Negro people. Having at first opposed as unwise 
the training of colored officers, Stimson shifted his emphasis 
to an insistence that such officers should be selected and trained 
with the greatest care. He explained to the 99th Pursuit squad- 
ron, the first unit of colored combat fliers, "how the eyes of 
everybody were on them, and how their government and people 
of all races and colors were behind them." (Diary, October 
5, 1942) In similar fashion, Stimson's early mistrust of the 
use of the Army as an agency of social reform dissolved under 
the impact of the manpower shortage, and was turned into 
enthusiasm by direct observation of the accomplishments 
of soldiers in attacking illiteracy among Negroes (and whites) 
at Fort Benning. 

In the sharp tragedy of the Negro in America there was no 
place for bitterness in reply to bitterness, but Stimson occa- 
sionally lost patience with Negro leaders whose opinions he 
found radical and impractical. A further trial lay in the fact 
that at first the Communists and later both Japanese and Nazi 
agents made energetic efforts to use the race problem as an 
apple of discord. In Stimson's view the complaints of Negro 
leaders fell into three categories : the remediable, about which 
he was eager to hear, the trivial, rising generally from pride 
offended by the thoughtless slights of the ordinary white man, 
and the impossible those which took no account of a heritage 
of injustice deeply imbedded in the mores of the nation. The 
deliberate use of the war emergency to stir unrest and force 
new policies for which the Negroes themselves were unpre- 
pared seemed to Stimson blind folly, and he felt that this hot- 
headed pressure was partly responsible for the rising racial 
tension which produced such ugly outbreaks as the Detroit 
riots of June, 1943. On the other hand, he was equally irritated 
by the "childishness" of his friends in the Navy, whose rigid 
restriction of Negroes to service as messboys was only modi- 
fied on the personal insistence of the President. And Stimson 
himself pointed out to Army leaders that pictures of the Detroit 



464 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

outbreak showed young white thugs to be in almost every case 
the aggressors. 

There could be no denial of the patriotism and the idealism 
of the "radical" Negro leaders, and their criticisms sometimes 
opened the eyes of the War Department, but their general 
attitude was hardly constructive. The attitudes and opinions 
advanced by most Negro newspapers, too, were shockingly 
biased and unreliable; as little as their white opponents would 
the Negro editors look for the mote in their own eye. It was 
more helpful to deal with such Negroes as Dr. Frederick Pat- 
terson of Tuskegee Institute, or Truman Gibson, Stimson's aide 
for Negro affairs after 1943. These men made suggestions and 
recommendations that were of great practical value to their 
people, and without the least disloyalty to their race they were 
prepared to face squarely the fact that oppression and injustice 
have left their mark on the bulk of American Negroes. For 
his honesty and courage Gibson was called bitter names by 
some other Negroes; to Stimson he was a trusted associate and 
a distinguished public servant. 

The final reckoning on the Negro and the wartime Army 
was not clear when Stimson left the War Department. The 
performance of the only Negro infantry division sent into 
combat as a whole was disappointing, but smaller units (in- 
cluding elements of the same division) did better. The whole 
story was to be found only by a study of all the hundreds of 
Negro units combatant, service, and training troops and 
the man who generalized from a partial experience, even the 
experience of a Secretary of War, was on dangerous ground. 
Both the Army and the Negro, Stimson believed, did better 
than their respective enemies would admit, but from a 
thorough and dispassionate study of their work in all its aspects 
there would surely come ways for both to do still better in the 
future, and it was with great satisfaction that Stimson saw 
such studies promptly begun by his successor. 

6. SCIENCE AND NEW WEAPONS 

There was perhaps no more striking success in the American 
management of World War II than the marriage of science 



THE WARTIME ARMY 4 b 5 

and the military, the basic outlines of which have now been 
recorded by James Phinney Baxter in Scientists Against 
Time? The two principal agents of this triumph, in Stimson's 
view, were Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant, two dis- 
tinguished scientists and administrators whose persuasive fore- 
sight had won the confidence of President Roosevelt at the 
beginning of the national emergency. These men and their 
associates from the beginning set a standard of effort which 
in its combination of soundness and daring left open for such 
officers as Stimson no intelligent course but full and hearty 
collaboration. 

The service a Secretary of War could perform here was a 
triple one. The easiest, and at the same time perhaps the most 
important, was simply to make it clear to his Department and 
to scientific leaders that it was War Department policy to 
make the fullest possible use of scientific help in every part of 
the Army's work. This attitude, fully shared by General Mar- 
shall, did not always permeate to every level of the Army, and 
in occasional officers of otherwise outstanding ability there 
persisted a blind spot on the subject of "outside advice." But 
after one or two officers had been replaced, largely on account 
of their inability to make full use of modern techniques, the 
notion of fighting an up-to-date war began to spread, and it 
was a notable characteristic of the men whom General Mar- 
shall brought rapidly forward during the war that they were 
not frightened by new ideas. 

There remained a real difficulty in establishing proper 
methods for the development of effective continuous contact 
between the Army and the scientists, and Stimson's second 
service was in choosing the men and establishing the organiza- 
tion which could do this job. His principal assistant in this 
work was Bundy, who was not a scientist but possessed the 
lawyer's talent for appreciation of the other man's problem. 
With Bundy and Bush, Stimson worked out in the spring of 
1942 an organization, in which the Navy joined, whereby 
Bush and an officer from each service department became a 
committee of three for the education of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff in scientific problems. To supplement this organization 

3 The Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown & Co., 1946. 



466 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

there was set up in November, 1942, a special section for new 
weapons in the G-4 division of the General Staff. Both of these 
moves were useful, but the latter particularly proved insuf- 
ficient, and Stimson responded quickly to the suggestion of 
Bush and Bundy, in September, 1943, that new weapons must 
become an independent section of the Staff. 

The work that followed is an excellent example of the proper 
functions of the Secretary of War, as Stimson understood that 
office. By constant but friendly pressure he and his friend 
Bush won Marshall's support for the new idea, an essential 
part of which was the selection for the new job of an officer 
with a solid reputation as a first-class soldier. When this officer 
had been selected, in the person of Major General Stephen G. 
Henry, Stimson provided him with a full-dress recital of the 
importance of his new assignment. The diary entry tells the 
story : 

"I found that General Stephen Henry, whom I had selected 
for appointment to the new scientific weapons staff post, was 
here and he and McNarney [Marshall's deputy] came in 
and I tried to explain to him as well as I could what I wanted 
of him. I did this by telling him of my own experience with 
radar beginning with the time of my visit to Panama. Then 
Dr. Bush came in and joined the talk and gave him a talk 
on the new weapons which were being developed. Henry's job 
is to smooth the path of new weapons into use in the Army. It 
is pretty hard to define it because it is a new job. He is to do 
the work that it was intended that General Moses should do 
under G-4 but it has never been done because of interruption 
of other duties. While we were still talking, I called in Dr. 
Bowles to add his testimony of what was to be done and 
gradually the picture unfolded to General Henry and he 
became more and more interested. Of course he had come to 
Washington in a rather dejected and disappointed frame of 
mind because we were taking him away from his division 
an armored division, to which he had recently been appointed, 
but gradually the picture of the greater importance of the new 
position I was offering him in the war effort had developed 
before him and he became more and more interested. He has 
had a very fine record for several years as head of the Armored 



THE WARTIME ARMY 467 

Force School at Fort Knox. I heard of him when I was there 
nearly two years ago and met him then and I had not forgotten 
the impression his work had made on me. 

"Then while we were still talking we had another influx 
of people from Britain. This was a group headed by Sir Robert 
Renwick who has just come over to talk of the importance 
of radar to our Staff. . . . Renwick was a very forceful intel- 
ligent man who, although a civilian, holds a very high position 
in the actual war work in England in precisely the similar 
lines for which I am seeking Henry. Renwick launched into 
a vigorous talk about how far behind we were to the place 
where we ought to be if our effort was to be successful next year. 
I told him not to pull his punches but to let us have all he 
had in criticism and he did so, and when he painted the picture 
of the development that the British had already made in radar 
and how far we were behind that in our Air Forces, it made 
a profound impression on Henry. The whole job with Henry 
took from 10:25 until lunchtime at one o'clock. But it was a 
job well done for he has accepted his new post with vigor and 
enthusiasm." (Diary, October n, 1943) 

This process of indoctrination was one which Stimson fre- 
quently employed when advancing his favorite ideas. Occa- 
sionally, he feared, it left his auditors with the feeling that 
they had been subjected to an old man's lecturing, but in this 
case at least the results were thoroughly satisfactory. 

Under General Henry, the new Developments Division of 
the Staff performed with outstanding success. The basic rea- 
sons for this success were two: first, the ready acceptance by 
the Army of such a division at the special staff level, and 
second, the selection of a director for that division out of 
the top drawer of the Army. Henry's success eventually priced 
him out of the market, and he was "stolen" by General Mar- 
shall a year later for the unconscionably difficult job of direct- 
ing the redeployment and demobilization of Army personnel, 
but the standards he had set were maintained by his successor. 

The third important service of the Secretary, and the most 
arduous, was his personal advocacy of specific new techniques 
and weapons. The most important single instance of this kind 
was the use of radar. Stimson's interest in the electronic eye 



4 68 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

was first kindled in 1940 by the enthusiasm of his relative, 
Alfred Loomis, and throughout the war it remained an object 
of his particular attention. In April, 1942, he selected Dr. 
Edward L. Bowles to serve as his special consultant "for the 
purpose of getting radar upon a thoroughly sound and com- 
petent basis as to installation, training, and maintenance." 
(Diary, April i, 1942) Bowles possessed in high degree the 
knack of winning the confidence and arousing the interest of 
the military, and his services in the new and difficult business 
of co-ordinating electronics with tactics were of the first order. 
Other matters in which Stimson's personal interest was keen 
were: artillery Stimson and McCloy, indulging the inclina- 
tion of two former artillerists, took a lively interest in all 
new developments, giving particular support to the develop- 
ment of self-propelled mounts and more powerful antitank 
guns; antiaircraft an early slowness in this field drew Stim- 
son's eye and he watched it carefully throughout the war, 
being personally responsible for a highly successful visit of 
British gunners from Malta in 1943; tanks his own first 
inclination was in favor of heavier tanks than the General 
Sherman, but on the basis of reports from the party principally 
interested (General Patton) he stoutly defended the Sherman 
when it was attacked by critics in 1944 and after; aircraft 
this was Lovett's field, and Stimson confined his labors mainly 
to the vigorous support of the Air Forces' theory of strategic 
bombing; bacteriological warfare this purely defensive and 
precautionary undertaking required Stimson's personal atten- 
tion in its organizational stages, but after the appointment of 
George Merck it ceased to give him concern, for Merck 
combined administrative skill with a keen appreciation of the 
peculiarly sensitive nature of his assignment ; medical science 
here Stimson's interest was keen and strong, and his direct 
contact with the Surgeon General, on the problems of war- 
time medicine, was probably greater than with any other 
single bureau chief (the subject, after all, had the strongest 
of human appeal to any civilian, and especially to a doctor's 
son) ; atomic energy mentioned only in low voices behind 
closed doors for four years, this subject ceased to be an under- 



THE WARTIME ARMY 469 

taking apart and became the center of StimsonV official life 
after March, 1945. 

The close understanding which Stimson and Marshall main- 
tained with their scientific advisers and the impressive achieve- 
ments of wartime science combined in the end to produce a 
wholly new atmosphere in the Army. By March, 1944, it was 
clear to Stimson that scientists "are now thoroughly in vogue 
with our Army." For this result the main credit belonged to 
the scientific leaders who had constantly asserted and proved 
the value of their services; for his part Stimson was more 
than content with the generous encomium he later received 
from the scientists' historian : "It would be hard to exaggerate 
the role played by Secretary Stimson in ensuring effective co- 
operation between the civilian scientists and the huge organiza- 
tion over which he presided. No one in the War Department 
approached with keener zest the problem of extracting from 
scientific research the maximum contribution to the war effort. 
Again and again he provided the impetus which broke log 
jams and speeded major problems on their way to solution." 4 

4 Baxter, op. cit., pp. 32-33. 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Effort for Total Mobilization 



IT MAY fairly be doubted whether anyone in America fully 
appreciated, in December, 1941, the size and scope of the 
war effort which would be necessary in the next four years. 
In every respect but one the absence of fighting on American 
soil the Second World War for Americans dwarfed all its 
predecessors, and the exception itself added to the magnitude 
of the task, for the distance of the front inevitably lent psycho- 
logical support to those who wished to fight as easy a war as 
possible. 

The extraordinary wartime accomplishment of the Amer- 
ican nation left, in Stimson's view, no room for doubt as to the 
essential soundness and strength of American society. It Had 
been his conviction, throughout his life, that there was no 
discernible limit to the power of the American people when 
they were firmly united in purpose. But the strength of Amer- 
icans was only equaled by their ignorance, both of war and of 
high politics, and without the leadership of a firm and stout- 
hearted President they could never have been mobilized for 
victory. The people themselves seemed often to have a willing- 
ness for sacrifice and effort which outpaced the actions of 
Washington, but they tolerated in their Congressmen an atti- 
tude of hesitation which frequently delayed and sometimes 
blocked the measures needed for an all-out prosecution of the 
war. 

To Stimson the residents of wartime Washington broke 
down broadly into two classifications: those whose first and 
central object was to win the war, as quickly and thoroughly 
as a truly total effort would permit, and those who had other 

470 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 471 

conflicting purposes to which they sometimes gave a prior 
allegiance. The men whose whole mind was on victory were 
always a minority, but fortunately this minority usually in- 
cluded the President. Yet it was from feelings for or against 
Mr. Roosevelt's own New Deal that much of the waste and 
suspicion of the war developed. Stimson would have found it 
hard to decide which angered him most, the congressional 
rear guard which looked at every wartime act through the 
distorted lenses of a rancorous mistrust, or the self-righteous 
ideologists who had multiplied around the President in the 
brave new years after 1933 and who now would not understand 
that the natural enemy was in Germany and Japan, not in 
Wall Street or among the brass hats. Why the right could not 
behave like Jim Wadsworth, and the left like Harry Hopkins, 
Stimson never understood. He had foreseen this sort of trouble 
in 1939 when he wrote, in supporting Mr. Roosevelt's firm 
stand against aggression, that "National unity is not . . . pro- 
moted by methods which tend to disrupt the patriotism of 
either party or the effective co-operation of the two." 1 Never- 
theless he had hoped that war would produce a far greater de- 
gree of forbearance and unity than it did. Only in the first few 
months after Pearl Harbor was there any appreciable relief 
from the stale battles of a past age. Afterwards the New Deal 
"cherubs" returned with all their ancient zest to the struggle, 
and Stimson once estimated that antiadministration "trouble- 
makers" in Congress added to his troubles about one-hundred- 
fold. 

Now no doubt some of Stimson's feeling was merely a 
healthy annoyance at the inevitable disagreements and diffi- 
culties of war ; he was never, in his private feelings, a man of 
overwhelming patience. But he could not avoid the conclusion 
that in very large part his objections to the atmosphere of war- 
time Washington rose from two convictions which he deeply 
held and which were not generally shared. The first was his 
complete dedication, emotional and intellectual, to the proposi- 
tion that the only way to fight a war is to fight it with your 
whole and undiluted strength. Discussion about what it would 
take to win seemed to him meaningless. Such considerations 

1 Letter to the New York Times, March 6, 1939. 



472 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

might be appropriate in small campaigns like those of the 
Spanish-American War, but in the world conflicts of the 
twentieth century they were wholly out of place. The only way 
to minimize the final ghastly price of World War II was to 
shorten the struggle, and the only way to shorten it was to 
devote the entire strength of the nation to its relentless prose- 
cution. Every sign of division was an encouragement to the 
enemy, and every concession to self-indulgence was a shot fired 
in folly at your own troops. The only important goal of the 
war was victory, and the only proper test of wartime action 
was whether it would help to win. 

In the mind of a fanatic, of course, the convictions set out in 
the last paragraph might well have led to absurdity. But Stim- 
son thought he understood that the best soldier is the balanced 
and healthy one, and neither for the troops nor for the nation 
did he advocate any ridiculous and unprofitable wearing of 
hair shirts he continued to get his own rest and sport when- 
ever possible, and his principal concern for his War Depart- 
ment friends was that they must do the same. 

It was obvious, furthermore, that in the kind of war that 
America faced it would not do for every man to grab a rifle 
and start walking toward Berlin. Although critics sometimes 
seemed to doubt it, the War Department was fully aware of 
the degree to which World War II must be fought "in factory 
and farm." In the complex organization that was demanded 
of the United States, there must be balanced the demands of 
the Army and Navy, of allies in every continent, and of the 
American economy itself. All this Stimson understood he 
had supported Lend-Lease on precisely this theory of Amer- 
ica's role in the war. What he held was simply that every man 
and every dollar and every factory should be so employed as 
to contribute its maximum strength to the war. 

Matched with his conviction that the war deserved the 
country's whole attention was a complete lack of apprehension 
lest war destroy any of the lasting values of American democ- 
racy. He could not share the fears of either right or left; from 
his knowledge of the country and its leaders, he was certain 
beyond doubt or fear that there would be no war-spawned 
dictatorship in America; nothing in his experience justified 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 473 

the laments of Mr. Roosevelt's opponents over the increased 
authority of the Executive. Even less was he alarmed by the 
bogy of "militarism." Only in the fantastic human and 
economic cost of war did he see important danger, and this cost 
could be cut down only by a policy of "war to the uttermost." 
The general statement of these two convictions would prob- 
ably have been accepted by most Americans throughout the 
war; but the application of principles to the terrain and the 
situation frequently brings to light major latent differences of 
emphasis, and in order to make Stimson's position wholly clear 
we shall have to study specific issues of his wartime years. The 
most fruitful field for such a study is the wartime use of man- 
power. Nothing touches more closely upon the opinions and 
interests of a man than the demands of his government with 
respect to the use of his person, and there is nothing more in- 
extricably a part of modern war than the existence of such 
demands. 

I. MILITARY MANPOWER 

The American Army of December, 1941, was composed of 
those men who by inclination or availability had been most 
readily and painlessly detached from civilian life. Although 
the Selective Service Act of 1940 had given definite and con- 
clusive recognition to the principle of the obligation of the 
citizen to serve as might be directed by his government, the 
limitations surrounding this principle were such that during 
the first year of the war Stimson and other administration 
leaders were involved in a series of moves to strengthen and 
broaden the Selective Service System. And after 1943, when 
the manpower requirements of the armed services had been 
mainly satisfied, these same leaders, by an extension of think- 
ing as logical to them as it was fearsome to their opponents, 
became ardent advocates of a National Service Act for direct- 
ing the assignment of the country's labor force, a measure 
which America alone of major fighting nations never enacted. 
At each of the different stages of this continuing struggle there 
were interesting episodes. 

The first major improvement in Selective Service after 
Pearl Harbor was the reduction of the draft age from twenty 



474 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

to eighteen. In retrospect Stimson was astonished that it should 
have taken the nation almost a year to give legal recognition to 
the fact that war is a young man's game, but in the records 
there was ample evidence that this delay was forced not by a 
lack of foresight on the part of the Army and its leaders but 
by the reluctance of Congress to accept until absolutely neces- 
sary the drafting of younger men. Both before and after Pearl 
Harbor Army recommendations for a reduction in the draft 
age were ignored by Congress, and by April, 1942, the War 
Department had decided to wait until the pressure of events 
strengthened its case. The rising draft calls of the spring and 
summer finally provided the required pressure, and in Octo- 
ber, 1942, explaining the Army's bitter needs to a House com- 
mittee, Stimson emphasized the unpleasant fact that the draft 
was reaching the end of its present resources, and that it was 
now a choice between men under twenty and men palpably 
unfit for extended combat service (or else the family men who 
all agreed should come last) . Such a choice was really no 
choice at all. The argument was unanswerable, although pro- 
tests were heard from educators, clergymen, and others. 

In November, after a month of delay and after the elections 
had safely passed, over the protests of many and with the re- 
luctant support of others, the draft was at last extended to 
those who should by all the principles of effective warmaking 
have been the very first to be called. When General Marshall 
reported to the nation in 1945 that "men of eighteen, nineteen, 
and twenty make our finest soldiers" he was only re-emphasiz- 
ing what troop leaders have known for generations. Yet 
throughout the war there was a considerable group of men in 
Congress who continued to be suspicious of the Army's use of 
younger men, and time after time Stimson was forced to re- 
emphasize that the War Department was not planning some 
sort of infant slaughter. 

A somewhat contrasting problem was the issue of volunteer 
enlistments, which also reached its solution at the end of 1942. 
It was clear that no orderly manpower policy could be worked 
out while unrestricted volunteering was permitted, but here 
the advocates of control met strong opposition from the United 
States Navy, of whose many proud traditions not the least was 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 475 

its reliance upon volunteer sailors and marines. And one of the 
best-indoctrinated friends of the Navy was Franklin Roose- 
velt. The President supported with courage and force the 
reduction of the draft age, but throughout the early months of 
the war he backed the Navy in its insistence on maintaining a 
volunteer system. Stimson knew when he was outmatched; 
even late in 1942, when the question was urgent, he approached 
it gently. In a letter to the President on November 18 he asked 
for counsel as to the position he should take before Congress 
on manpower legislation: "My feeling, as you know, is that 
sooner or later we should come to a single selective process 
without any volunteering. But I have a vivid recollection of a 
letter written by yourself to the Navy painting an attractive 
picture of the superhuman character of a Navy built upon 
volunteering. . . ." 

Circumstances caught up with the Navy and its friend, how- 
ever, and on December 5, 1942, the President issued an Execu- 
tive Order suspending all voluntary enlistments except for 
seventeen-year-olds. Later, after the usual interservice diffi- 
culties, an agreement was reached under which the Army and 
Navy shared in fair proportion the peaches and lemons pro- 
duced by the draft. The change was overdue, for a year of 
delay had thrown the two services seriously out of balance in 
their relative average ages; figures for September, 1942, 
showed the average age of Navy enlisted men to be under 
twenty-three while the corresponding figure for the Army was 
over twenty-six. Whatever the reason and the reasons given 
by Army and Navy supporters were as far apart as the poles 
it was a fact that a disproportionate number of young volun- 
teers preferred the naval service. Once more only the pressure 
of events had forced the correction of an essentially wasteful 
and inequitable policy. The Navy's desire for volunteers was 
natural just as natural as the reluctance of matriarchal Amer- 
ica to draft her eighteen-year-olds. But both were attitudes 
that insufficiently recognized the requirements of the war. 

Reducing the draft age and ending volunteer enlistments 
were minor matters compared to the battle that ebbed and 
flowed throughout the war over the size of the Army. This was 
a subject upon which Stimson was more vehement than most 



476 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of his military advisers; it seemed to him to involve very 
urgent questions as to the strength of America's wartime reso- 
lution. 

Questions about the Army's size fell into two categories, one 
technical, the other almost entirely a matter of attitude. Tech- 
nically, the problem was one of assessing the various compo- 
nents of the war effort so as to define their relative positions. 
The useful size of the Army depended upon the weapons and 
munitions that could be produced to arm it and the ships that 
could be built to transport and supply it, and the whole pro- 
gram of the Army in turn must be related to the undertakings 
of the Navy and the requirements of America's allies. A cal- 
culus so complex would have no undebatable answer, but some 
sort of conclusion was urgently required, if only as a basis for 
action. In this technical problem Stimson took no active part; 
the matter was one for professionals. The Army's projected 
strength, based on extended discussions in the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff and with administration leaders responsible for produc- 
tion and manpower, was fixed in 1942 at 8,200,000 officers and 
enlisted men. A downward revision in 1943 was offset in 1944 
by rising casualty lists, and total strength of the Army on VE- 
day was approximately 8,300,000. The figure thus projected 
and defended against heavy opposition in 1942 proved to be 
both accurate and sufficient. For this Stimson could claim only 
the credit of never having lost confidence in General Marshall. 
His own feeling had been, throughout, that the cloth might 
well be cut too fine; in early 1944 and again a year later he 
urged Marshall to reconsider and if necessary expand his 
estimates. Both times the Chief of Staff rehearsed his thinking 
and stuck to his decision, and his judgment was vindicated in 
victory. 

Stimson, believing that the projected army was perhaps too 
small, naturally plunged with considerable zest into the task 
of defending it against those who argued that it was too big. 
The facts and figures upon which the administration discus- 
sion was based were necessarily secret, and it was therefore not 
possible to undertake a detailed explanation of the situation/ 
But in Stimson's view much of the national doubt about the 
size of the Army was due not to any difference on the facts but 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 477 

to a widespread misunderstanding of the nature of war. To 
this problem he addressed himself on March 9, 1943, in a 
radio speech which clearly demonstrated his broad view of 
the war, its prosecution, and the Army's critics. 

First he addressed himself to a problem of "mental atti- 
tude." "Tonight I wish to speak to you about the subtle danger 
which, unless guarded against, may destroy our present bright 
hopes for a decisive victory. It arises out of a mental attitude 
which is quite prevalent among our people, including many 
of the best of them, and has danger of which most of them are 
quite unconscious. ... It is hard to analyze the attitude to 
which I refer. . . . Very often it appears in patriotic people 
who do not realize what we are up against and who honestly 
do not understand the purpose and necessity of some of the war 
measures which their government is taking. But the attitude 
is just as dangerous even when it is innocent. I think it can 
accurately be called the attitude of trying to win the war the 
most fierce and dangerous war which has ever confronted the 
United States in some easy manner and without too much 
trouble and sacrifice. Abraham Lincoln met it in the Civil 
War even after that war had been going on for over a year and 
many bloody battles had been fought. He said to a caller at the 
White House in September 1862, 'The fact is the people have 
not made up their minds that we are at war with the South. 
They have not buckled down to the determination to fight this 
war through ; or they have got the idea into their heads that we 
are going to get out of this fix somehow by strategy. . . . They 
have no idea that this war is to be carried on and put through 
by hard, tough fighting; that it will hurt somebody; and no 
headway is going to be made while this delusion lasts.' 2 

"Today this attitude which Lincoln described, manifests 
itself when we say: 'The Russians have destroyed so many 
Germans that Germany will not be able to carry on any more 
offensives' ; or when we say : 'The German people are crack- 
ing 7 ; or when we say : 'The best way to win the war is to give 
our Allies plenty of weapons to fight for us' ; or when we say : 

2 Stimson had found this quotation in Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln, The War 
Years, I, 553. This book was one in which Stimson found both consolation and instruc- 
tion during 1943. It was good to know that many of the troubles of World War II 
had been faced and surmounted, in far more trying circumstances, eighty years before. 



4 7 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

If we make too big a military effort we shall so dislocate our 
economy that we shall never recover; we shall create a per- 
manent dictatorship and lose our historic freedom' ; or when 
we say other things which at bottom represent merely wishful 
thinking or the dread of personal sacrifices and the desire to 
find a better way out. I believe that this attitude towards hard 
fighting on our part really underlies much of the criticism 
which is being directed today against the proposed size of 
our Army." 

Yet this attempt to dodge "tough fighting" was the surest way 
to lengthen the war and almost the only way to put victory in 
doubt. The people who held this attitude, and who questioned 
the need, in a time of rising success, for ever greater armies, 
"do not understand the psychology of combat. They do not 
realize that battles are won by continuous rapid blows upon an 
enemy and that -when an enemy begins to show signs of de- 
moralization these blows must be continued and, if possible, 
redoubled in order that he may not have time to re-form his 
forces. Once the enemy is checked or shaken on the field of 
battle, he must be constantly pursued and hammered until he 
is completely beaten or surrenders. The very fact that it is 
known that we have trained forces ready to do this tends to- 
wards his demoralization." 

And Stimson cited the contrasting examples of Meade at 
Gettysburg and Foch in 1918. Hesitation in the one case had 
lengthened a war beyond expectation, while the remorseless 
aggressiveness of Foch, in the other, had brought victory 
months ahead of schedule. 

Supporting the general tendency to think up easy ways to 
win the war were other misconceptions drawn from too hasty 
observation of the newfangled thing called total war. For if it 
was true that World War II was in scope and complexity un- 
like any previous struggle, placing demands upon all of society 
far exceeding those of simpler wars, it was emphatically not 
true that war had reduced the importance of armed forces. 
The lines of effort, for all their increased ramifications, still 
ended in regiments, ships, and aircraft manned by military 
men. It was not antediluvian to raise an army, and Stimson 
addressed himself cheerfully to his duty of explaining the 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 479 

Army to the people. The first and most significant point was 
its relatively small size, compared to the armies of its enemies. 
Secondly, it was an Army of unprecedented variety and flexi- 
bility, with training problems of corresponding difficulty. 
Third, it was an Army in which at least a year must separate a 
major training program from the battlefield. "I speak with 
careful consideration when I say that if we should halt this 
great training establishment which we have now built and 
timed according to the present timetable of the war, we should 
deal a heavier blow to our hopes of a complete final victory 
than by any loss which we are likely to sustain on the field of 
battle." 

The Army must be raised ; more than that, the nation must 
trust its leaders. It was possible of course that the Army and 
the Navy were proceeding in pigheaded blindness on the basis 
of wholly outdated concepts. Stimson could only rehearse the 
nature of wartime planning and give his solemn assurance that 
the figures for the size of the Army "have thus had the benefit 
of all the brains, accumulated research, and judgment which 
our governmental machinery provides for that purpose." Only 
time could prove whether the decisions made were wise, but 
all the advantages of study and experience lay with the admin- 
istration and not its critics. 

Another half-truth drawn from the concept of total war was 
the theory that the projected army would too greatly strain the 
nation's manpower resources. This theory in Stimson's view 
embodied one of the most pertinacious fallacies of all, and he 
jumped on it with both feet. For, however important the non- 
military aspects of the war might be, it was wholly illogical to 
support them at the expense of the Army until every other 
means of industrial mobilization had been exhausted. "Only 
those who believe that our industry and our farming and our 
general civilian activity are really keyed to an all-out war are 
entitled to make this argument. It is the duty of every citizen 
to examine into his own life, and his own community and see 
whether production in industry and on the farm cannot be 
increased enormously in efficiency; whether absenteeism, 
threatened strikes, general complacency, insistence on 'business 
as usual,' or even insistence on hoped-for standards of living, 



480 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

are not going a long way to prevent what could be accom- 
plished by an all-out war effort." 

To attack the size of the Army when the civilian economy 
was incompletely mobilized was absurd. "When you are driv- 
ing a team of horses and one of them goes lame, you do not 
lame the other horse to equalize the team. You try to get two 
sound horses." 

And then in his conclusion Stimson shifted from the defense 
of the Army to a note of personal challenge. "For myself, I 
have reached the conclusion that one of the reasons why indus- 
try and agriculture and the whole civilian population have not 
moved more rapidly towards an all-out effort is that we have 
relied almost entirely on voluntary co-operation. This volun- 
tary co-operation would work with a large part of our popula- 
tion as soon as they clearly understood the need for it. But the 
effect of the recalcitrant or thoughtless few is so great upon the 
minds and efforts of others that I am convinced that the only 
way to accomplish the result which we must all reach, is 
through a General [National] Service Act. This has proved 
true in England and I believe it is now true here. 

"The issue between the proponents of the Army program 
and its critics in my opinion largely narrows down to this 
difference: the leaders of the Army are trying, by shortening 
the war, to save the lives of thousands of young Americans 
lives vital to the future of this country. The opponents of the 
Army program are trying to avoid present trouble the incon- 
veniences and relatively minor sacrifices which would be in- 
volved in a more thorough and drastic reorganization of our 
industrial and civilian life for the remaining period of this 



war." 



This was Stimson's first public statement in favor of a prin- 
ciple to whose support a large proportion of his time was given 
in the following two years without success. 

2. NATIONAL SERVICE 

Of all the shortages which complicated America's war 
effort, almost the last to appear was the shortage of manpower. 
At the beginning of the crisis, in 1940, there were more than 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 481 

nine million unemployed, and even at the time of Pearl Har- 
bor there were still four million men out of work. It thus 
happened that as the manpower problem gradually became 
pressing in 1942, it was approached by most administration 
leaders with partial and specific remedies not based on any 
general policy for the mobilization of the nation's human re- 
sources. Later, when the general theory of national service was 
advanced, it was faced by the existence of commissions, poli- 
cies, and attitudes based on the theory of voluntary or piece- 
meal arrangements. In December, 1942, the President had 
given to Paul McNutt, head of the War Manpower Commis- 
sion, executive authority in the field of manpower which was 
loosely described at the time as dictatorial. But in point of fact 
McNutt's authority was extremely limited, nor was his com- 
mission so organized as to exercise any broadly effective lead- 
ership. Although Stimson's relations with McNutt were al- 
ways personally friendly, it would be too much to say that the 
War Department and the War Manpower Commission ap- 
proved of each other's views of the manpower problem. The 
War Department believed in drastic action; the Manpower 
Commission was committed to guidance and cajolery. And in 
between the two was Selective Service, a prize for the control 
of which both contended. This particular battle was decided 
against Stimson by tHe President late in 1942 when the former 
was away for a short rest. Mr. Roosevelt took the sting out of 
his decision in the first Cabinet meeting after Stimson's return. 
"He saw me, welcomed me back, and said 'Harry, I've been 
robbing your henroost while you were away.' I was ready for 
him and snapped right back, 'I won't go away again.' " (Diary, 
December n, 1942) 

But the Manpower Commission, the War Department, and 
Selective Service might be shuffled and reshuffled as often as 
the President chose, without changing the basic situation, for 
there was no law providing for genuine executive direction of 
the mobilization of civilian labor. Unlike Great Britain, 
Russia, and all the British dominions, the United States pos- 
sessed no law in the area of civilian manpower matching its 
Selective Service Act for raising an army and a navy by com- 
pulsion. In other words, unlike her allies and enemies, she had 



482 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

no legislation which compelled a man to work for his country 
in the arsenals and factories and other activities which 
equipped and supplied American soldiers. 

National service legislation was urged early in 1942 by such 
men as Grenville Clark; in July of that year a subcommittee 
of the War Manpower Commission, under Stimson's devoted 
assistant Goldthwaite Dorr, recommended such legislation in 
a comprehensive and compelling report; but the Dorr report 
was opposed by other elements of the administration, and the 
introduction of a national service bill in February, 1943, was 
left to Senator Warren Austin and Representative James 
Wadsworth, two men who as Republicans were wholly out- 
side the administration and whose nonpartisan interest in the 
war effort was beyond challenge. Stimson promptly gave his 
support in principle to the proposals they had advanced, but 
in the absence of official backing from the White House the 
War Department refrained from active advocacy. Meanwhile, 
throughout 1943, Stimson continued to urge on the President 
the need for such legislation, pointing out that without active 
presidential support there was no possibility of its enactment. 
Mr. Roosevelt, alive as always to the political difficulties in- 
volved, and hopeful that his toothless War Manpower Com- 
mission might prove adequate to the emergency, held back; 
most of his administration, and particularly those members of 
it connected with labor and progressive circles, strongly sup- 
ported his decision. 

In December, 1943, the country was shaken by the imminent 
threat of a national railroad strike. Similar threatened tie-ups 
in coal and steel had already produced a strong wave of feeling 
against small groups who appeared to put their private inter- 
ests above the wartime interests of the nation, and it seems 
certain that Mr. Roosevelt was himself deeply stirred by these 
events. Feeling that strikes and threatened strikes were merely 
surface evidence of the incompletely warlike attitude of the 
nation, Stimson joined with Secretary Knox and Admiral 
Land of the Maritime Commission in strongly urging that the 
President take the lead in advocating a National Service Act. 
Stimson further supported this appeal with a personal letter 
to "My dear Chief," pointing out that the President owed it 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 483 

to himself not to leave the nation in any doubt as to his support 
of a complete war effort. 

As far as Stimson ever knew, the President's annual message 
of January n, 1944, was prepared by him without the advice 
and consultation of either the advocates or the opponents of 
national service legislation, and Stimson was as surprised as 
he was delighted to find that in this message the President 
came out strongly and persuasively in favor of such an act, 
describing it as the only truly democratic method of organiz- 
ing American manpower. Fortified by this pronouncement, the 
advocates of national service began a vigorous campaign for 
the enactment of a revised Austin-Wadsworth Bill. On Janu- 
ary 19, 1944, Stimson appeared before the Senate Committee 
on Military Affairs as the first administration spokesman for 
this measure. The line of argument he there developed fairly 
depicts his general approach to the problem. 

After stressing that 1944, as a year of extraordinary military 
operations, must also be a year of all-out production and 
unity at home, he pointed out the existence of labor unrest in 
some areas and labor shortages in others. Such a situation at 
home could hardly be viewed with understanding or approval 
by the men in the armed forces. "The evident remedy is for 
the nation to make clear in no uncertain terms the equality of 
obligation of its citizens. . . . The men in war production are 
not essentially different from the men who are proving them- 
selves heroes in the South Pacific and on the Italian peninsula. 
They can be more accurately defined as the victims of the 
failure of the nation to develop a sense of responsibility in 
this gravest of all wars. . . . We must . . . bring home to 
each of these men the fact that his individual work is just as 
patriotic and important to the Government as any other cog 
in the great machine of victory. . . . The purpose of a Na- 
tional Service Law is to get at this basic evil which produces 
the irresponsibility out of which stem strikes, threats of strikes, 
excessive turnovers, absenteeism, and the other manifestations 
of irresponsibility with which we are now plagued. It is aimed 
to extend the principles of democracy and justice more evenly 
throughout our population. There is no difference between 
the patriotic obligations resting upon these two classes of 



484 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

men which I have described. Certainly the nation has no less 
right to require a man to make weapons than it has to require 
another man to fight with those weapons. Both processes should 
be so designed and carried out as to serve the interest of the 
country in winning the war. In a democracy they should also 
be so designed and executed as to serve the principles of justice 
between its citizens." 

This was admittedly a principle new to the United States. 
Stimson rehearsed the historic reasons which had made such a 
move unnecessary in previous wars, pointing out that World 
War II was the first in which the nation had come anywhere 
near to a full mobilization. The dependence of the armed 
forces on the entire economy was obvious, and it was equally 
obvious that millions of civilian workers were not efficiently 
meshed into the war effort. An extremely heavy labor turnover 
in some war industries and severe labor shortages in others 
were seriously affecting war production. To meet this situa- 
tion a new approach was needed. 

The basic purpose behind Stimson's advocacy of a National 
Service Act was the same as his purpose in almost all other 
wartime affairs. "I have been discussing the logic of national 
service as an orderly, efficient process by which a democracy 
can give all-out effort in war. But more important now, 
national service will be the means of hastening the end of this 
war. . . . Every month the war is prolonged will be measured 
in the lives of thousands of young men, in billions of dollars. 
The attrition in manpower and in our national wealth will be 
felt for generations if this conflict is prolonged. National 
service is the one weapon we have neglected to use. Posterity 
will never forgive us if we sacrifice our plain duty to a desire 
for creature comfort or for private gain." Then as head of 
the War Department he emphasized the critical importance 
of giving full support at home to the troops abroad. "It will 
be tragic indeed if the discontent and resentment felt by our 
gallant soldiers on the fighting fronts burns deeply and festers 
in their hearts. . . . The voices of these soldiers speak out 
very clearly today in demanding that all Americans accept 
the same liability which a soldier must accept for service to 
country. ... To me it appears to be the plain duty of the 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 485 

Congress to give our troops this all-out necessary backing. It 
is time for all pledges to be redeemed in acts. ... I remind 
this committee now of the solemn statement with which our 
Congress concluded its declaration of war against Japan and 
against Germany on December n, 1941': c to bring the conflict 
to a successful termination, all the resources of the country 
are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.' I 
ask no more than that you examine this proposed legislation 
in the light of that statement." 

Stimson's support of the Austin-Wadsworth Bill was fol- 
lowed by similar statements from other leaders of the service 
departments. To these men their case seemed irrefutable, and 
they drew great hope for success from the fact that public 
opinion polls showed better than 70 per cent of the people to 
be in favor of their position. Yet the Austin-Wadsworth Bill 
was never even reported from committee, and a second great 
effort in 1945 produced a heavily diluted measure which was 
finally beaten by the Senate in April, one month before the 
end of the European war. 

The idea of national service, for all its logic and its popular 
support, was roundly defeated by a combination of forces 
unlike any other in the war years. The first and most impor- 
tant factor in this combination was the violent opposition 
expressed by the leaders of organized labor. With complete 
unanimity, labor leaders denounced the President's proposal 
of January, 1944, and their opposition continued unabated 
throughout the war. Yet it was impossible for Stimson to 
believe that in the light of the British experience American 
union leaders were wholly honest in their claims that national 
service meant "slave labor." Stimson, like other advocates of 
national service, repeatedly emphasized that there was no 
intention of indicting labor as a whole. It was merely a matter 
of providing obviously needed leadership and direction in 
making full use of the nation's labor force. Nor did he believe 
that national service would operate against the rights of labor. 
"A National Service Act will not cause the evils which have 
been feared by its opponents. The man or woman who wants 
to do his or her part to win the war as quickly as possible has 
nothing to fear from a National Service Act. The act does 



486 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

not impair the rights of the worker in respect to wage scales, 
hours of labor, seniority rights, membership in unions, or other 
basic interests of the civilian workers. Wherever justified by 
considerations of family or health, deferment from service 
would be granted by the local Selective Service Board. I 
would not advocate any National Service Act which would not 
protect such elemental rights to the fullest. National Service 
Acts have been enacted by the great English-'speaking democ- 
racies which are now fighting this war with us, namely Great 
Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. With them the 
legislation has worked so successfully that the exercise of 
sanctions has become rare; the existence of the national service 
organization and the morale which it creates having proved 
that the people of a country want to do their duty when it is 
clearly pointed out to them by their government." 3 

But the leaders of American labor were not persuaded, and 
they were joined in opposition by spokesmen of industry in 
the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of 
Commerce, and by industrial advisers within the Government 
itself. Both labor and management preferred the anarchy of a 
voluntary system to the imagined perils of Government 
direction. 

Nor were matters made easier by division within the ad- 
ministration itself. The coolness of labor was reflected among 
many members of Congress who were ordinarily among the 
President's most ardent supporters, and in the War Manpower 
Commission, which should logically have been the principal 
proponent of national service legislation, there was deep- 
seated opposition not only to the general principle but to the 
specific form of the Austin- Wadsworth Bill, which would have 
by-passed McNutt's widely unpopular organization. Further, 
since only the leaders of the service departments and the Mari- 
time Commission were explicitly on record in favor of the 
bill, there was a natural tendency to argue that national service 
was a militaristic proposal. How far this was from the truth, 
at least in Stimson's case, may be suggested by the fact that 
he constantly insisted that the director of any national service 
program must be a man commanding the support of labor and 

3 Statement at Senate hearing, January 19, 1944. 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 487 

civilian groups; the only name which appears in his notes as 
a suggestion for this post is that of Henry A. Wallace. But 
the bulk of Mr. Roosevelt's New Deal supporters did not 
share the President's view of national service, and their oppo- 
sition, though quiet, was consistent and strong. 

In the face of this opposition the President himself did not 
until 1945 conduct any vigorous campaign for the legislation 
he had so eloquently advocated, and in one sense there was a 
justification for this reluctance which extended beyond a mere 
question of political prudence. In his message of January, 
1944, Mr. Roosevelt had coupled his demand for national 
service legislation with requests for broader taxes and other 
powers of wartime control, and he had insisted that the mes- 
sage be considered as a whole. In the absence of congressional 
support for these other aspects of his program, he adhered 
through 1944 to his original pronouncement that it would be 
unfair to press for specific controls over manpower alone. Al- 
though Stimson could not share these conclusions, since man- 
power legislation was a matter of special importance from 
the standpoint of the War Department, he nevertheless agreed 
that the failure to obtain a National Service Act was essentially 
similar to the congressional failure in passing adequate tax 
legislation. Both were reflections of the national refusal to 
fight an all-out war. 

Under different circumstances of timing, and with a dif- 
ferent relationship between the executive and the legislative 
branches, a National Service Act, a strong tax program, and 
other measures adequately enforcing the austerity of effective 
war-making might perhaps have been passed even early in the 
war, but of this Stimson could not judge. National service was 
basically a matter not in his jurisdiction; he was drawn into 
it only by the pressure of events and by the default of 
those administration leaders directly responsible for the 
nation's manpower. Although the war was won without it, he 
was certain that an earlier, stronger policy would have brought 
a quicker and cheaper victory. And he was certain too that 
if for any reason the war had been prolonged, the absence of 
a National Service Act would have had most serious conse- 
quences. Stimson believed that in this field, as in many others, 



488 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the American people were better judges than their representa- 
tives in Washington. 

3. LABOR AND THE WAR 

Through the early months of his service in Washington, 
Stimson had found his relations with labor leaders gratifyingly 
cordial. The question of labor relations was one on which he 
found the Roosevelt administration somewhat "tender," but 
fortunately Sidney Hillman, labor member of the National 
Defense Advisory Commission, was a man of breadth and 
character, and Stimson was quickly able to establish with him 
an enduring relationship of mutual confidence. Through Hill- 
man he was able in the summer of 1940 to reverse a previous 
administration decision and shift the War Department's 
arsenals from a forty- to a forty-eight-hour week. The result 
of the longer hours, and higher wages, was increased morale 
and a 3O-per-cent increase in production. Hillman was also co- 
operative in insuring approval of War Department arrange- 
ments for the movement of Jamaican laborers to Panama for 
work on the canal defenses. Both the increase of hours and 
the importation of labor were sensitive subjects in labor circles, 
and Hillman's assistance was proof of his stature. 

Stimson's own view of the position of labor in the national 
crisis he expressed in a speech to the American Federation 
of Labor in convention assembled at New Orleans, on Novem- 
ber 1 8, 1940. No group, he pointed out, was more directly con- 
cerned with the Nazi menace than labor. British labor was 
demonstrating that no group was more determined to defend 
its liberties. He expected a similar response from American 
labor, and thus far there was every evidence that his expecta- 
tions were correct. In the coming struggle, labor, like every- 
one else, would have to make sacrifices; no responsible man 
could promise "business as usual." He could promise that "the 
practice and procedure of collective bargaining through freely 
chosen and independent unions will not be sacrificed." Within 
this policy the War Department was confident that all par- 
ticular problems could be worked out. 

These general views Stimson maintained throughout the 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 489 

war. There were strikes and threats of strikes which did not 
meet his concept of the proper obligations of labor in a national 
emergency, and some of them involved energetic remedial 
action by the War Department; and some few labor leaders, 
with the administration's favorite enemy John L. Lewis in 
the van, behaved with outrageous irresponsibility. But on bal- 
ance he thought that the response of organized labor was as 
patriotic as that of the rest of the nation. 

Stimson always insisted that strikes affecting military pro- 
duction must be prevented. It followed that the rights of labor 
must be protected and equitable conditions of work and pay 
insured by the Government, for the strike is the one compelling 
weapon of the worker. But there must be no strikes in defiance 
of the Government's awards and decisions. A good example of 
the kind of action Stimson approved in dealing with such 
strikes occurred in June, 1941, when there was a strike at the 
North American Aviation plant, in Inglewood, California. 
The prompt and decisive handling of this affair was a matter 
on which Stimson looked back with great pride, the more so 
because it was an action of a united Government, in which 
the President and Sidney Hillman were quite as firm as 
Stimson and his assistants. 

The North American plant was in 1941 one of the most 
important and successful producers of military aircraft. In 
defiance of an agreement to mediate, a strike was instigated 
by men whom all competent observers believed to be Com- 
munists. The Government reacted quickly, taking over the 
plant and bringing in troops to insure the undisturbed return 
to work of those who wished to respond to the President's 
appeal. Stimson himself ordered that Army patrols should 
protect the homes of returning workers, which had been threat- 
ened by the strike leaders. With the President's explicit ap- 
proval, Stimson co-operated with General Hershey in the 
issuance of a directive to all local draft boards instructing 
them to cancel the draft deferments of those who engaged in 
such strikes. It is illustrative of the crosscurrents within the 
administration that one of the President's administrative assist- 
ants later publicly announced that Hershey's statement had 



490 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

been issued without Presidential authority. The strike quickly 
collapsed. 

The North American strike was only one of a number on 
the west coast in early 1941 which the Government believed 
to be Communist-led. The party line at the time was of course 
that the imperialist Roosevelt was warmongering to hide the 
fatal weaknesses of his so-called New Deal. Whatever their 
other failings, the Communists were quite skillful in con- 
centrating their operations in plants of major military im- 
portance; the issue sharply presented by the North American 
affair was whether the Government was strong enough to over- 
come such activities on the part of men whose primary alle- 
giance was to a foreign (and at the time not friendly) power. 
The distinction between Communists and others in the labor 
movement was to Stimson one of vital importance. "I am draw- 
ing the line sharply between legitimate labor controversies 
and subversive action by men who have ulterior motives against 
our defense," he wrote in June n, 1941; the same line was 
being drawn by the President, and by the Justice Department 
under Jackson. The issue was not decisively settled, because 
within two weeks of the end of the North American strike 
it vanished in the sharpest reversal on record of the Com- 
munist party line. The Nazi invasion of Russia thus had the 
incidental effect of postponing indefinitely a reckoning be- 
tween the American Government and American Communists 
which would otherwise probably have occurred in the summer 
of 1941. 

The use of the Army to break strikes is not pleasant; neither 
soldiers nor citizens like to see the armed forces employed 
against Americans. That it was necessary several times during 
the war Stimson regretted, but this was the result of a situation 
beyond his control or responsibility. His own duty was to 
protect the reputation of the Army, and he therefore insisted 
that in each case, when the Army was called in, it must have 
an opportunity for careful planning and energetic action. The 
outbreak of violence in such cases is usually the result of 
faulty preparation or imperfect leadership ; in the record of 
the Army in its ventures into domestic conflict during the 
years 1940 to 1945 Stimson found another proof that the United 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION-- 491 

States Army deserved its reputation for versatility and tactful 
firmness. The decision to use troops of course never rested 
with the War Department, and in the case of the Montgomery- 
Ward strike Stimson strongly opposed the President's decision, 
for he was unable to see a connection between the war effort 
and a retail storekeeper, however intransigent. 

In critical labor cases throughout the war Stimson found 
that he and the President were in broad agreement. On the 
other hand, Mr. Roosevelt's cautious approach to the general 
problem did not correspond with Stimson's thinking at all. 
He did not sympathize with the administration's unwillingness 
to take a flat stand against stoppages affecting war production. 
Here again Stimson believed that Mr. Roosevelt missed an 
opportunity for aggressive leadership; he could not believe 
that American labor was any different from other sections of 
the country, or that intransigent labor leaders should be solici- 
tously treated by the administration. Labor's no-strike pledge 
was in the main loyally kept, but Stimson saw this loyalty as 
one reason the more for dealing sternly with those who chose 
to break the pledge. And there came a time, in 1943 and 1944, 
when Mr. Roosevelt's conciliatory methods in dealing with 
labor troubles became in Stimson's view a serious obstacle to all- 
out mobilization. Many a man in Congress leaving aside the 
few who are always against labor was reluctant to pass such 
drastic measures as a National Service Act or a stronger tax bill 
when the administration seemed to be unwilling to use its full 
existing strength to control irresponsible labor leaders. 

4. THE ARMY AND WAR PRODUCTION A NOTE ON 
ADMINISTRATION 

We have seen that an important segment of the manpower 
problem as Stimson saw it was the relationship between the 
Army and civilian agencies of the Government; in the field of 
war production this relationship was the central difficulty. 
After Pearl Harbor there was never any doubt about the 
determination of the whole country to produce for war as it 
had never produced for peace, but disagreements on ways and 



492 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

means involved Stimson against his will in the resulting 
squabbles. 

The question of organization for war production had faced 
the President since 1940, and by January, 1942, it was clear 
that the evolution from NDAC to OPM to SPAB was incom- 
plete. As the President considered his next step Stimson wrote 
him a letter on January 7 which summarized his own broad 
view of the problem. In essence, two things were needed: 
First, there must be a reorganization giving adequate authority 
to a single man; this reorganization must not destroy the 
natural and traditional procurement functions of the Army and 
the Navy, but it must provide clear and sufficient authority 
for co-ordination at the top. Second, the President must find 
the right man for the job and to Stimson this meant a man 
with real and demonstrated talent in production, or at least 
with a proved capacity for dealing with production executives. 
The post, furthermore, was of such importance that the Presi- 
dent "should not move until you are dead sure of your man." 

Mr. Roosevelt, on January 16, established the War Produc- 
tion Board with Donald M. Nelson as chairman. Both the 
form of the new organization and the man selected were satis- 
factory to the Secretary of War; Nelson had a good reputa- 
tion, and he was now to have the priceless advantage of pos- 
sessing genuine authority. Stimson, like most other members 
of SPAB, was a member of the new board, but his powers were 
merely advisory, and in the main he left his seat to Patterson. 
He was glad that the great abilities of William Knudsen were 
not lost in the shuffle ; Knudsen moved to the War Department 
.and for the rest of the war the Army had the assistance of his 
remarkable understanding of industrial management. His ap- 
pointment as lieutenant general was a Presidential gesture 
which neither Stimson nor Knudsen considered very helpful 
.but by sheer personal quality Knudsen gave distinction to his 
uniform and rank. 

The War Production Board continued in operation through- 
out the war. During this period there occurred several sharp 
disagreements between WPB and the War Department; these 
'matters were only of tangential importance in Stimson's life, 
since the procurement and production problems of the War 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 493 

Department remained in the capable hands of Patterson. But 
there was current in the discussion of these widely publicized 
disagreements one misunderstanding which Stimson consid- 
ered extremely dangerous. At the time he made no public 
comment on the question, adhering to his general view that it 
is never useful to indulge in public debate over intragovern- 
mental problems, but his feelings on the matter were and 
remained strong. 

Much of the comment on disagreement between the War 
Production Board and the military, both at this time and later, 
was based on the assumption that the underlying issue was a 
contest between civilians and the military for the control of 
the national economy. This view seemed to Stimson palpably 
preposterous. He was fully aware that in Patterson and Som- 
ervell he had two strong-minded associates, both of them fired 
by the single-minded purpose of meeting the Army's needs. 
But to assume that it was War Department doctrine that the 
Army should run the country's economy was arrant nonsense; 
this assumption, however, seemed to be accepted as gospel by a 
small group of men in WPB who were on cordial and com- 
municative terms with the press, and who seem also to have 
converted Mr. Nelson. This was a conspicuous example of the 
sort of twisted thinking that Stimson met time after time 
among administration officials whose minds were fixed in the 
rigid grooves of self-styled "liberalism." These men had an 
ingrained distrust of military leaders which led them always 
to look for sinister militaristic motives in every Army action. 
That some irritation should be caused by the driving energy 
of General Somervell was not surprising, but there was no 
need to denounce the War Department or Somervell him- 
self as "militaristic." Stimson and Patterson were them- 
selves civilians, and they remained the chief officers of the 
War Department; what they wanted for the Army was not 
control, but supplies, and at no time did they believe that war 
production could be organized under other than civilian con- 
trol. 

The real issues between the Army and WPB were quite 
different There was a difference of emotional value; there 
were men in WPB who felt that the Army failed to under- 



494 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

stand the needs of the civilian economy and men in the War 
Department who felt that WPB was not sufficiently aware of 
the needs of war. There was also an issue of administrative 
policy, centering on the desire of the service departments to 
supervise their own procurement. That these operations should 
in turn be supervised and co-ordinated by WPB was quite 
proper, and clearly there was room for disagreement on the 
exact manner in which this dual interest should be adjusted, 
but there was here no question of "militarism," and a com- 
promise plan approved by Stimson in November, 1942, pro- 
vided a clear basis for co-operation. All plans, however, 
depended on the quality of the head of WPB, and for his 
great task Nelson lacked the necessary stature as a man and 
talent as an administrator, or so Stimson was forced to believe. 
And he found an excellent proof that strong and able men 
were unfrightened by "militarism" in the relationship be- 
tween the War Department and the War Shipping Adminis- 
tration, whose able deputy chief for operations was Lewis W. 
Douglas. Douglas had his troubles with overzealous Army 
officers, but by dealing openly with the War Department's 
civilian heads he was able to resolve his difficulties. 

At first it was Stimson's hope that Nelson could be bolstered 
by the appointment of strong assistants, and he joined in the 
negotiations which brought Charles E. Wilson and Ferdinand 
Eberstadt into WPB in September, 1942. Although both men 
eventually broke with Nelson, they served with conspicuous 
skill while they lasted. In February, 1943, when Nelson 
proved unable to drive so spirited a team, Stimson and other 
administration leaders joined in asking the President to re- 
place him with Bernard Baruch. No action was taken, how- 
ever, until eighteen months later when in young Julius Krug 
the President found a man who was able to take over the WPB 
and run it without constant friction. 

The history of war production showed the President's ad- 
ministrative technique at every stage. Having tinkered for 
nearly two years with boards and commissions he finally gave 
real power to the wrong man. Then when that man got into 
trouble, the President coasted along; he neither fully backed 
Mr. Nelson nor fired him. Stimson believed that it was Mr. 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 495 

Roosevelt's irritated but indecisive tolerance of men lacking 
strength of character that lay behind many wartime adminis- 
trative difficulties. Disagreements with men like Hull and 
Morgenthau were painful, but in these cases Stimson always 
knew where he stood; disagreements with men who backed 
and filled were extremely irritating. 

In March, 1943, after several months of friction in the Gov- 
ernment, Stimson took time out to register a summary com- 
plaint to his diary. After acquitting Mr. Roosevelt of the 
charge of playing politics with the war effort, he continued : 

"But the President is the poorest administrator I have ever 
worked under in respect to the orderly procedure and routine 
of his performance. He is not a good chooser of men and he 
does not know how to use them in co-ordination. 

"When I last held the post of Secretary of War under Mr. 
Taf t, who was a very good administrator, there were only nine 
Cabinet officers or ten persons at the Cabinet table including 
the President. Barring the Interstate Commerce Commission 
and perhaps one or two other minor quasi-independent com- 
missions, every administrative function headed up in one of 
the nine Cabinet officers and went to the President through 
the departmental head. Mr. Taft dealt with his departments 
through his Cabinet and that gave you a sense of responsibility 
and security that could not otherwise be obtained. Today the 
President has constituted an almost innumerable number of 
new administrative posts, putting at the head of them a lot of 
inexperienced men appointed largely for personal grounds 
and who report on their duties directly to the President and 
have constant and easy access to him. The result is that there 
are a lot of young men in Washington ambitious to increase 
the work of their agencies and having better access to the 
President than his Cabinet officers have. The lines of delimi- 
tation between these different agencies themselves and between 
them and the Departments [are] very nebulous. The inevitable 
result is that the Washington atmosphere is full of acrimonious 
disputes over matters of jurisdiction. In my own case, a very 
large percentage of my time and strength, particularly of 
recent months, has been taken up in trying to smooth out and 



4.96 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

settle the differences which have been thus created." (Diary, 
March 28, 1943) 

Whatever his weaknesses as an administrator, however, the 
President had a firm understanding of the facts of war. His 
underlings might wish to give antitrust suits precedence over 
war production, but the President was not persuaded. Pub- 
licity-seeking officials might wish to turn a military trial of 
saboteurs into a public spectacle, in spite of the fact that these 
same officials had informed the War Department that much 
of the evidence would be valuable to the enemy; the President 
stood firm. In some of these matters, and notably in his impa- 
tience with irresponsible sections of the press, Mr. Roosevelt 
was indeed more vigorous than his Secretary of War. 

5. PUBLIC RELATIONS 

Stimson's relations with the press in World War II were 
easier than ever before in has public career. Although the War 
Department was a conspicuous target for criticism, its Secre- 
tary had learned many lessons in thickness of skin when he 
was Secretary of State, and only once in his last five years in 
Washington was he seriously annoyed by any personal attack. 
A national news magazine in 1941 portrayed him as unable to 
stay awake in conferences, and his lust for combat briefly 
stirred him to thoughts of a libel suit, but his friends calmed 
him in the same way that he later calmed subordinates. Life 
was too short for such irritations; in 1943, writing to a leading 
Republican who wanted confirmation or denial of a story by 
Drew Pearson, Stimson remarked that "I do not have the 
time to read the output of Drew Pearson and Company. 
Fortunately the work of running the Army keeps me so en- 
tirely occupied that I am spared these irritations which seem 
to be inherent in the American version of a free press." Except 
in the case of particularly vicious or sensational charges it was 
his policy not to try to catch up with irresponsible attacks. 
Nevertheless commentators (with a few conspicuous excep- 
tions) remained a pet abomination; their lofty omniscience 
was a severe trial to a man who had always felt more sympathy 
with the actor than with the critic. 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 497 

The central problem of the Army's public relations was to 
get and keep the confidence of the people. Basically, of course, 
the way to win this confidence was to earn it in action; no 
skill in public relations would offset failure in the Army's 
mission, while in a successful Army all problems of public 
relations would become minor. This principle came naturally 
to Stimson, whose eagerness for appealing to the public had 
always been limited by a rigid sense of what was fitting in a 
public servant. 

The only enduring report on the Army furthermore \vould 
be that rendered to the people by the millions of citizen sol- 
diers; in 1943 Stimson remarked to a friendly group of critics 
seeking improvement in the Army's public relations that "In 
general . . . our liaison agents to interpret the Army to the 
people of the United States are the five million young men 
who are in the Army and who can act as missionaries to their 
parents and families and who are doing so very successfully." 
(Diary, February 25, 1943) He saw nothing to be gained, and 
much to be lost, in flamboyant self-advertisement of the type 
that occasionally occurred in other parts of the armed forces 
and in the younger branches of the Army itself, and he some- 
times became impatient with the irrepressible enthusiasms of 
the Air Forces. Especially while the Army remained largely 
untried there was no call for boastfulness ; throughout the war 
Stimson avoided predictions of success and tried to guide him- 
self by the counsel of the Old Testament: "Let not him that 
girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 4 

The major difficulty in the Army|s press relations was the 
necessity for military secrecy. While it was easy to agree in 
principle that nothing useful to the enemy should be made 
public, it was not always easy to determine in practice where 
the line should be drawn. Especially in the early months of the 
war there were many who felt that the War Department was 
unnecessarily niggardly in its release of information. But with 
both Archibald MacLeish and Elmer Davis, the two govern- 
ment officials who were successively concerned with this prob- 
lem, Stimson found himself able to establish cordial relations, 
and although they did not always agree with his judgment, he 

4 I Kings 20:11, quoted to press conference, August 13, 1942. 



498 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

found them open to persuasion. Stimson himself occasionally 
thought the professional rulings of his military advisers a 
trifle stern. Beyond a certain limit secrecy became self-defeat- 
ing; especially in the case of units in combat the morale value 
of extensive and specific publicity seemed to outweigh any loss 
likely to result from telling the enemy about units he had prob- 
ably already identified. 

But criticism from within the Government was frequently 
caused by an incomplete appreciation of the problem. The 
War Department, for example, maintained a strict control 
over all information about Americans in Japanese hands and 
Japanese in American hands, not because it feared to tell the 
people the whole story, but rather because material incau- 
tiously made public might well give the Japanese authorities an 
excuse to suspend the exchange of prisoners or to cut off the 
supply of Red Cross packages to those remaining in their 
hands. Nor was it through any kindly feeling toward Fran- 
cisco Franco that Stimson eliminated scenes accurately de- 
scribing the Spanish dictator from an official War Department 
film in January, 1943 ; it was rather that early 1943 seemed a 
singularly poor time for official disparagement of a man whose 
armies lay on the flank of the whole North African enterprise. 

The real fear of those who mistrusted the War Depart- 
ment's information policy was that material might be sup- 
pressed merely because it was unfavorable to the Army. There 
were certainly some instances of this kind of suppression in 
the war, but most of them occurred in areas far from Wash- 
ington, and such suppression was no part of Stimson's or 
Marshall's policy. Stimson himself repeatedly described Army 
reverses in blunt and definite language for what they were, and 
he consistently approved release of photographs and motion 
pictures graphically portraying the horror of battle. Every- 
thing that would bring the war closer to those at home he 
thoroughly supported. Indeed, in his eagerness to see the 
American people fully aware of the war he sometimes found 
in military reverses a stimulation that was lacking in reports 
of success. Thus the battle of the Bulge, in December, 1944, 
and January, 1945, had a favorable effect on American deter- 
mination, as Stimson saw it, while conversely the later rapid 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 499 

advances of General Patton so nourished public optimism 
that Stimson wrote to Patton in mock protest against his 
sabotage of the home front. 

When suppression of news did occur in overseas theaters 
there was ordinarily much more involved than mere face- 
saving. Probably the most sensational such case in the war was 
the slapping by General Patton of two psych oneur otic soldiers 
under hospital treatment in Sicily. General Eisenhower had 
made a gentleman's agreement with the press in his theater 
not to report this affair; he had severely reproved Patton and 
had exacted an apology to the troops ; he now wished to pre- 
serve the usefulness of a great combat leader. But Mr. Drew 
Pearson spilled the beans. In the ensuing hullabaloo Stimson 
firmly supported Eisenhower, meanwhile dispatching a per- 
sonal letter to Patton in which he clearly expressed his dis- 
appointment that so brilliant an officer should so far have 
offended against his own traditions. The incident was not a 
pretty one, but Stimson fully agreed with Eisenhower's view 
that Patton's services must not be lost. When a further outburst 
from Patton again embarrassed Eisenhower in the spring of 
1944, Stimson wrote another and much stronger letter to this 
"problem child/' but once more he supported Eisenhower's 
courageous acceptance of such annoyances and his refusal to 
relieve Patton. Perhaps no decision of the war was more 
triumphantly vindicated by events than this one ; in the sum- 
mer of 1944 Patton became almost overnight the idol of many 
of tire same newspapers and politicians who had most loudly 
demanded his removal in 1943. 

Although criticism in such cases as the Patton affair was 
sharp, and although he was never able to satisfy certain sec- 
tions of the press and some of the members of Congress that 
the War Department was not holding out on them, Stimson 
found that as the war progressed mutual understanding grad- 
ually developed. He considered it most regrettable that only 
in exceptional cases did congressional committees prove re- 
liable guardians of secret information, for it would clearly 
have been well for the Army and Congress to understand each 
other better than they did. This weakness, like others in the 
Government, seemed to him deeply rooted in the mechanics 



500 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and traditions of his ancient enemy, "Congressional Govern- 
ment." Whenever it proved possible to narrow the gap be- 
tween legislators and administrators, the results were helpful 
to both parties. In 1943 the War and Navy Departments ini- 
tiated a series of confidential meetings with Congress ; whether 
because these meetings satisfied the ordinary human eagerness 
for "inside information" or because they truly served, as 
Stimson hoped, to give Congressmen a better understanding 
of the war, they certainly produced an improved relationship. 

Both during the war and later Stimson regretted that he 
had not been able to do more of this sort of work himself. It 
was one of the disadvantages of his age that in conserving his 
strength he was forced to limit his own public activity as an 
interpreter of the Army. If he could have seen more of Con- 
gressmen and other Washington leaders, he could perhaps 
have prevented or limited some of the public misunderstand- 
ings and governmental squabbling that occurred. In general 
it seemed to him true throughout the war that the closer a 
civilian came to the Army, the more likely he was to give it 
his broad approval. 

What he asked of critics, whether members of the Govern- 
ment or not, was that they start with some sympathy for the 
Army's problems and that their remarks be designed to help 
the War Department do a better job. When the rubber "czar" 
sneered at "Army and Navy loafers" he may have been re- 
ferring to genuine weaknesses, but his approach was hardly 
helpful. In contrast, when James F. Byrnes quietly suggested 
that each agency of the Government investigate its own pro- 
curement work, the resulting Army report by General Frank 
McCoy was extremely useful. Stimson believed that the shrewd 
and skillful work done by Byrnes in his Office of War Mobili- 
zation was of vital importance in the operation of Mr. Roose- 
velt's fantastically complex administrative mechanism. 

In his own press conferences Stimson tried to present at 
weekly intervals a balanced review of the war as he saw it. 
The factual material for these reports was written for him in 
the Bureau of Public Relations over which Major General 
Alexander Surles presided with great good sense throughout 
the war, executing without complaint a task which must have 



THE EFFORT FOR TOTAL MOBILIZATION 501 

been distasteful to a soldier who had been in line for a corps 
command; Surles was much more than a "public relations 
man." His sound judgment and military knowledge were of 
frequent assistance to the Secretary of War in much broader 
fields. In his weekly summaries Stimson frequently added 
more personal comments, generally designed to set recent 
events in their broad focus. Against both optimism and undue 
gloom he waged a continuous battle, drawing from both vic- 
tory and its absence the same lesson : there was much still to 
be done. Occasionally, at the year's end or at the close of a 
campaign, he would allow himself to point with pride at the 
work of the Army. Regularly he turned aside all questions 
relating to intragovernmental squabbles, until newsmen 
learned to ask them with hopeless and amused foreknowledge 
that they would get no answer. As the men who covered the 
Pentagon became old acquaintances, the atmosphere of the 
press conferences became more amiable than anything he had 
known in the past, and in his last press conference, on Septem- 
ber 19, 1945, he spoke in a tone that was as sincere as it was 
unusual in him when he said, "In taking leave of you, I should 
like to tell you how greatly I have valued our association. In 
the midst of a war, there are many tensions. Tempers are apt 
to grow short. For my part, I feel that our differences have 
been unimportant during the five years I have been the subject 
of your scrutiny. 

"You have always seemed to me to be carrying out your 
duty to the public with a high regard for the ethics of your 
profession and the safety of the Nation. ... I should like to 
take this occasion to offer you my sincere thanks for the quality 
and understanding of your service and to give you my best 
wishes for your future success." 

Throughout the war a heavy majority of the people re- 
mained satisfied that they were being adequately informed by 
the Government. Certainly there was never a war or an army 
more completely reported, and in the enormously difficult task 
of bridging the gulf fixed between soldier and civilian the 
press and the radio did distinguished work. 

It was bridging this gulf as far as it was possible to do so 
that seemed to Stimson throughout the war to be the central 



502 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

task of war reporters and Army spokesmen. Evident and solid 
national unity seemed to him the greatest single moral force 
with which to crack the enemy's will to resist, and, finding 
himself constantly inspired by his own direct contacts with 
the troops, he regularly sought to give a similar directness of 
contact to other civilians. In public relations as in other mat- 
ters where the Army touched on civilian life, it was his object 
so to spread the spirit he found in the armed forces that it 
might become the spirit of the nation as a whole. And while 
the failure to enact a national service law remained as proof 
that this unity of attitude was never fully achieved, it would 
not be fair to end this chapter on any note of failure. Taken as 
a whole the effort of Americans at home was more than suffi- 
cient, and if many sources of strength remained unused, Stim- 
son was inclined to place the responsibility for waste more on 
the Government than on the people. His own greatest fear 
had been that in the different standards set for citizens and 
soldiers there might be bred a lasting bitterness between those 
who fought and those who stayed at home. But whether be- 
cause so many at home made great and earnest efforts, or 
because so many in uniform "never had it so good," or because 
the citizen: soldiers were always more civilian than military, 
no such cleavage seemed to develop in the early postwar years. 



CHAPTER XX 

The Army and the Navy 



SO FAR as the United States was concerned the Second 
World War was an amphibious war. "No enemy forces 
reached our mainland, and five million American soldiers 
were required to be transported across various oceans in order 
to get at their enemies. Troop transport and assault landings 
are traditionally the most difficult and dangerous of all mili- 
tary operations. The American Navy, co-operating in some 
cases with the British Navy and the two national air forces, 
furnished the cover and protection for such transport and 
landings. It rendered this service with brilliant success. Prac- 
tically no losses of men occurred in the transocean voyages, 
and remarkably few which could have been prevented by 
naval action occurred on the landings." (Memorandum, 
August 15, 1947) 

As this quotation shows, Stimson thoroughly appreciated 
the help the Army received from the Navy. He had traveled 
as a soldier across waters infested by hostile submarines, and 
he knew from anxious study the extraordinary difficulty of 
landing attacks. Further, though he was not directly concerned 
with the purely naval campaigns of the American fleet, he was 
of course an admirer of the courage and skill with which the 
Navy wrote into military history the names of the Coral Sea, 
Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, and many other fleet 
actions. 

This much said, we must proceed in this chapter to a dis- 
cussion of Army-Navy relationships in which the less pleasant 
side of the story will be emphasized. In this field as in others, 
Stimson as Secretary of War was called in when there was 
friction and not when there was peace. 

503 



504 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

I. STIMSON AND THE ADMIRALS 

The Army and the Navy fought the war together. After 
Pearl Harbor they fought in most areas under unified com- 
mand. They fought well together, and they reached a level of 
co-operation and mutual trust unknown in earlier wars. But 
the fact remained that they were two separate services. 

"Their leaders were not only separate but filled, ever since 
their cadet service at West Point and Annapolis, with a spirit 
of rivalry which reached into many phases of their lives. Not 
only had there been allowed between the two forces active 
competition for new personnel and equipment but even in 
sport the annual football game between the two academies had 
during the war reached a peak of rivalry where it became a 
national problem where and how the game should be located 
and managed." (Memorandum August 15, 1947) 

When Stimson wrote that the problem of the Army-Navy 
football game was a national issue, he did not exaggerate. He 
had himself made it a subject of Cabinet discussion in 1943. 

"At Cabinet meeting this afternoon I swung into a new 
line. Drew Pearson had had a recent article describing the 
present meetings of the Cabinet and their futility and how 
the Secretaries of War and Navy no longer tell the Cabinet 
anything but preserve that for private meetings with the Pres- 
ident. Today when the President reached me in turn and asked 
the usual conventional question of whether I had anything, I 
said 'Yes, Mr. President, I have something of very grave im- 
portance.' I then in humorous oratorical fashion presented 
the charges that had been made that the Cabinet was decadent 
and that the Secretaries of War and Navy had felt unable to 
discuss their matters before the lady and gentlemen sitting in 
front of them and that in consequence of these serious charges 
I had gone through my files and picked out a matter which 
was of very serious importance to bring before the Cabinet. 
I then narrated how I had written a letter to the Secretary of 
the Navy, copy of which I had sent the President, asking that 
the Academies at Annapolis and West Point should take the 
lead in sacrifice in public opinion and give up their annual 
football game; that I had received a reply from the Secretary 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 505 

of the Navy to the effect that football was of such 'inspira- 
tional' value to the young men of the Academy that he did not 
feel able to give it up. I pointed out that these letters had lain 
unanswered on the President's desk ever since April aoth and 
I asked whether there were any matters of equal importance 
that had claimed his attention during this time. By that time 
I had the Cabinet in a roar of laughter. To my amusement, 
however, they took the subject of athletic sports up from my 
lead and debated it for over an hour and a quarter with such 
seriousness and diversity of opinion that the President sug- 
gested that he would appoint a committee to determine it. We 
all turned on him and said that this was a matter of such im- 
portance that he must decide it himself. This he was evidently 
afraid to do but he finally said he would give it very serious 
consideration and let us know later. But it was the first gleam 
of feally vigorous and widely dispersed fun that we had had in 
the Cabinet for many months." (Diary, May 21, 1943) 

The disagreement over the Army-Navy game was fit ma- 
terial for a joke, but it was nevertheless symbolic of a problem 
which was one of the most serious that Stimson faced. The 
Army and the Navy were called on in the Second World War 
to act with a co-operation and a mutual trust for which they 
had never been properly trained, and it required all the wis- 
dom and self-restraint of which both sides were capable to 
achieve the astonishing success that was in general attained. 

Although Army-Navy co-operation was close to Stimson's 
heart, the Army was closer still, and his wartime view of the 
relationship between the services cannot be taken as wholly 
dispassionate. Like everyone else involved, he occasionally 
lost his patience with the opposite service; still he always did 
so in private, and one Army Reserve officer who indulged in 
public squabbling with an admiral found himself summarily 
silenced by order of the Secretary of War. Stimson went out 
of his way to show his personal gratitude to naval officers who 
had served with distinction and good will in combined opera- 
tions under Army command ; cordial relations were conspic- 
uously the rule in the European war, and he personally 
decorated both Admiral Hewitt, of Africa and the Mediter- 



506 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ranean, and Admiral Kirk, of Normandy, with the Army's 
Distinguished Service Medal. 

Stimson and his civilian staff maintained intimate and 
friendly contact with their colleagues of the Navy Depart- 
ment. Frank Knox was a man of robust integrity, without any 
trace of pettiness. He and Stimson became close friends whose 
mutual respect was not shaken by their occasional disagree- 
ment. A similar if somewhat more cautious friendship seemed 
to exist among most of the senior generals and flag officers. 
But on many issues friendship gave way to interest. 

Differences between the Army and the Navy were frequent. 
Many of them were simply the inevitable clashes between 
two agencies of strong will ; there were similar disagreements 
between the Ground Forces and the Air Forces, and between 
smaller subdivisions of the War Department. But some of the 
Army-Navy troubles, in Stimson's view, grew mainly from 
the peculiar psychology of the Navy Department, which fre- 
quently seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim 
religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his 
prophet, and the United States Navy the only true Church. 
The high priests of this Church were a group of men to whom 
Stimson always referred as "the Admirals." These gentlemen 
were to him both anonymous and continuous ; he had met them 
in 1930 in discussions of the London Naval Treaty; in 1940 
and afterwards he found them still active and still uncon- 
trolled by either their Secretary or the President. This was not 
Knox's fault, or the President's, as Stimson saw it. It was 
simply that the Navy Department had never had an Elihu 
Root. "The Admirals" had never been given their comeup- 
pance. 

A striking illustration of this general situation was the 
Navy's refusal to share the Pentagon Building. Such a sharing 
was originally suggested by Admiral King; it was enthusiasti- 
cally taken up by Marshall and Stimson, supported by the 
President and Knox, and finally blocked by resistance in the 
Navy Department. Since the suggestion was made at a time 
(October, 1942) when it would have provided a badly needed 
public demonstration of genuine Army-Navy solidarity, this 
naval obstinacy seemed particularly irresponsible. "The Ad- 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 507 

mirals" wanted more of the Pentagon than the Army offered. 
Yet the Army offered space in the new building for as large 
a proportion of the Navy in Washington as it would keep for 
the Army itself. When it became apparent that the bright 
hope of October was to be smothered in November, Stimson 
noted in his diary (November 19) that "the Bureau admirals 
are holding Knox up and he is as helpless as a child in their 
hands. As a result, it seems as if this really important improve- 
ment of having the Navy come in to our building and share it 
with us in such a way as to assist united command will break 
down simply from the crusty selfishness of some Bureau offi- 
cers . . ." and he continued with his central criticism of the 
Navy: "The Navy presents a situation very much like that 
which confronted Elihu Root [in the Army] in the first part 
of the century. The Navy has never had the benefit of the 
changes which Root made in the Army and which has re- 
moved from the Army the bureaucratic service officers who 
used to dominate the Department and defy the Secretary of 
War and the Commander in Chief of the Army." The Navy 
in World War II had in Knox, Forrestal, and King three 
strong men at its head; they accomplished much in moving 
their Department forward. But in Stimson's mind it was no 
discourtesy to remark of them that not one was another Elihu 
Root. 

Other disagreements with the Navy revolved around some- 
what different issues. The question of the Negro struck against 
strong Navy prejudice, and so did the ending of volunteer 
enlistments. General MacArthur was a constant bone of con- 
tention; Stimson was bound to admit that the extraordinary 
brilliance of that officer was not always matched by his tact, 
but the Navy's astonishing bitterness against him seemed 
childish. Another interservice difference was on the question 
of five-star rank. The whole idea of a new grade above that 
of general or admiral seemed absurd to Stimson and Marshall, 
who inclined to believe that a good officer would not need it, 
while a bad officer should not have it. But the Navy disagreed 
and eventually had its own way, even to taking half the new 
ranks while providing only a third of the armed forces. 

But the bare rehearsal of all these disagreements is hardly 



5 o8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

helpful. What seemed important to Stimson, in retrospect, 
was to look behind the disagreements toward their causes, in 
an effort to prevent or minimize their future occurrence. The 
best way to do it is to study one particular disagreement in 
some detail. And the one with which Stimson was most deeply 
concerned was the prolonged struggle over antisubmarine 
warfare. 

2. LESSONS OF ANTISUBMARINE WAR 

In the first sixteen months of American participation in the 
war, from December, 1941, through March, 1943, German 
submarines destroyed 7,000,000 tons of Allied shipping, a 
large majority in areas of American responsibility. The sub- 
marine was the only weapon with which the Germans could 
take aggressive advantage of American weakness, and they 
used it energetically. The complete history of the American 
defense against this attack will not here be told ; the battle was 
a naval responsibility. But a combination of circumstances 
brought Stimson into closer contact with antisubmarine war- 
fare than with any other single campaign of the war, and the 
story of his experience is instructive. 

The battle of the Atlantic, whoever might be in charge of 
it, was a matter of vital interest to the War Department and 
its Secretary. The basic strategic purpose of Stimson and the 
General Staff, as we have seen, was to move American air and 
ground forces against the Germans as quickly and strongly as 
possible. Ship losses on the scale of those in 1942 and early 
1943 were destructive of this purpose. However great the ac- 
complishments of the shipbuilders, continued sinkings meant 
losses of both bottoms and equipment which seriously limited 
the effective deployment of American striking forces in Eu- 
rope. Though submarine success might hurt naval pride, it 
was the Army which more seriously felt the pinch. 

If its effect on the Army's grand strategy had been his only 
connection with the submarine, Stimson might have confined 
himself to proddings and complaints, but it happened that one 
branch of the Army was directly concerned with antisubma- 
rine warfare, and the weapon which gave that branch new 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 509 

and vastly increased effectiveness was one in which his interest 
was personal and intense. The Army Air Forces, by ancient 
agreement, retained in 1941 and 1942 the general responsibil- 
ity for all shore-based air operations, although late in 1941 
General Marshall had granted a naval request to share in the 
use of long-range landplanes. And the development of radar, 
in particular of microwave, ten-centimeter air-borne radar, 
provided for aircraft a weapon of search at sea which in Stim- 
son's view revolutionized the essential contest of submarine 
warfare, changing it from a battle between unseen U-boats 
and surface vessels into a battle between frequently surfaced 
submarines and far-ranging planes with superhuman powers 
of vision. For a long time this view was not shared by the naval 
officers directly responsible for antisubmarine operations, and 
in the resulting conflict many of the complexities of Army- 
Navy relations were clearly illustrated. 

Stimson's interest in radar dated back to 1940. In that 
period, during the battle of Britain, the primary military use 
of the electronic eye was the detection of enemy aircraft from 
ground radar stations. Air-borne radar was a later develop- 
ment, the tactical importance of which was first brought home 
to him during his study of the defenses of Panama in early 
1942. From the use of radar by aircraft to detect approaching 
enemy surface vessels it was an easy step to proceed to the idea 
of radar as an air-borne antisubmarine weapon, for subma- 
rines (until the annoying invention of the Schnorchel pipe in 
1944) had to spend a substantial part of their lives on the 
surface. 

This advance in Stimson's thinking roughly matched the 
development of radar sets suitable for this type of work. In 
the spring of 1942 ten pre-production sets of ten-centimeter 
radar were installed in Army bombers, B-i8's with no other 
combat value, and in antisubmarine operations off the Atlan- 
tic coast these aircraft immediately demonstrated their power, 
catching their first submarine on April i. (The first Army 
sinking confirmed in postwar analysis occurred on July 7.) 

Stimson at once began to push for increased emphasis on this 
new weapon. He lectured the President and Secretary Knox; 
after having himself flown out over the Atlantic to observe the 



510 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

new radar set in action, he ordered Marshall and Arnold, on 
April 23, to follow his example. He put Lovett to work to 
make sure that radar production was at its maximum speed, 
and he ordered a reorganization of Army antisubmarine 
training along lines worked out by his radar consultant, Dr. 
Edward L. Bowles. 

Under the combined pressure of air operations and in- 
creased escort protection, German submarines soon withdrew 
from the Atlantic coast, shifting their attack first to the Gulf 
of Mexico and then to the southeastern Caribbean. Mean- 
while there came into the open a serious disagreement with 
the Navy over the tactics and control of antisubmarine air- 
craft. 

For the War Department, the model of antisubmarine air 
operations was to be found in the work of the British Coastal 
Command, a division of the Royal Air Force which was 
charged with the primary responsibility for all British-con- 
trolled shore-based antisubmarine air operations. Coastal 
Command had been set up in early 1941 and had been increas- 
ingly successful in destroying submarines. Although it was 
under the "operational control" of the British Admiralty, it 
operated with a very high degree of autonomy, exercising 
direct and complete control over all its subordinate groups 
and wings. In the commands on each coast of the British Isles, 
air and naval officers operated as partners and friends in com- 
bined headquarters, but there was no attempt by the local 
Navy commander to guide and control the operations of the 
air. Thus autonomously organized, with no restrictions on its 
tactical doctrine, Coastal Command had developed and ap- 
plied with striking success the theory of the antisubmarine 
offensive. Granting the essential function of the convoy, this 
theory assigned to aircraft the primary mission of searching 
out and killing submarines wherever they might be, and al- 
though it regularly responded to Admiralty requests for con- 
voy cover in critical areas, Coastal Command devoted the 
weight of its effort to a direct offensive on U-boats. 

The American setup in 1942, with all units, sea and air, 
Army and Navy, under naval command, was entirely differ- 
ent. It was the conviction of the Navy, forcefully expressed 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 511 

by Admiral King, that "escort is not just one way of handling 
the submarine menace; it is the 072/3; way that gives any prom- 
ise of success." 1 It followed that the appropriate function of 
aircraft was to provide additional convoy cover, supplement- 
ing the basically important labors of surface vessels. The 
Navy, furthermore, was not persuaded that aircraft were ef- 
fective submarine killers. As late as June, 1942, Secretary 
Knox, apparently unconverted by Stimson's missionary work, 
was reported in the New York Times as telling Congressmen 
that no airplane had ever sunk a submarine; Knox corrected 
himself when questioned on this statement, but that he could 
make it at all was indicative of the blue-water attitude. (The 
postwar records show that at the time Knox reportedly made 
this statement two of the four kills of all United States forces 
against German submarines had been made by Navy planes.) 
Finally, the Navy wholly differed from the Army in its 
view of the command and control of aircraft. Instead of per- 
mitting the concentration of Army aircraft under the direc- 
tion of a single air officer, it insisted on assigning planes to the 
command of individual sea frontier commanders, thus effec- 
tively preventing the concentrated use of air power against 
the points particularly threatened by U-boats. Although Stim- 
son pressed on Knox in July, 1942, the desirability of central- 
ized control of both air and naval operations, his proposal 
was rejected; the Navy preferred to place its trust in making 
all areas independently strong, unconcerned by the waste of 
force and delay in action which in the Army view this solution 
necessarily involved. The result of this decision soon appeared 
in the statistics of the antisubmarine battle. In November and 
December, 1942, over thirty merchant vessels were sunk by 
U-boats in the Caribbean area and none in the Gulf and At- 
lantic coast areas; during this period the Navy's own experts 
estimated that ten German submarines, on the average, were 
working in the Caribbean area and only one in the Atlantic 
and Gulf areas combined. Yet during the same two months 
Army and Navy aircraft flew 45,000 hours on patrol in the 
almost unattacked northern areas, and only 9,000 hours in the 

1 Letter from King to Marshall, June 21, 1942. This letter is available in full in 
Samuel E. Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1947, p. 310. 



512 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

beleaguered Caribbean. In the entire month of December no 
aircraft in the northern areas made any contact with a subma- 
rine. And the shift of U-boats from the Gulf and Atlantic 
coasts had already been evident in September, two months 
earlier. With all allowance for the logistic difficulties of a 
shift in air strength to meet the U-boat move, Army officials 
contended that this sort of situation clearly demonstrated the 
need for integrated control over the relatively flexible air arm; 
sea frontier commanders were not likely to part with their 
aircraft, once allocated, nor could they be expected to visual- 
ize the "big picture." 

Throughout i942*Stimson continued to urge upon the Navy 
the advantages of a truly co-ordinated antisubmarine com- 
mand and an aggressive attitude toward the submarine. The 
Army in the autumn of 1942 expanded its originally experi- 
mental organization into the Anti-Submarine Air Command, 
but this Command remained much less effective than Stimson 
had hoped; its aircraft under Navy direction continued to be 
assigned mainly to defensive operations. Not all of the diffi- 
culty in organizing the Army antisubmarine forces came from 
the Navy, by any means. If the Navy was enamored in single- 
minded fashion of convoy and escort, the Army Air Forces 
were at least equally devoted to the concept of strategic air 
power, and for many months their antisubmarine command 
remained a good deal of a stepchild. 

In March, 1943, the whole problem was reopened in a big 
way. During the first three weeks of that month U-boats oper- 
ating mainly in the North Atlantic southeast of Greenland, in 
an area not yet covered by air search, sank over three-quarters 
of a million tons of shipping. The President sent a sharp note 
of inquiry to Marshall and King as to the air dispositions 
planned to meet this threat. The War Department, fortified 
by a comprehensive and extremely able report prepared by 
Bowles, began a final effort to win for Army aircraft the au- 
tonomy and full naval co-operation needed for a prosecution 
of offensive operations. 

This effort failed. Stimson suggested to Knox the establish- 
ment of an autonomous, offensive air task force for antisubma- 
rine work; the suggestion was rejected. Then Marshall urged 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 513 

in the Joint Chiefs of Staff the creation of a new over-all anti- 
submarine command embracing all air and surface units, and 
responsible like a theater command directly to the Joint 
Chiefs. King rejected this solution, but he indicated his aware- 
ness of the problem by creating instead the Tenth Fleet, under 
his direct command, to co-ordinate all antisubmarine opera- 
tions in all the sea frontiers. Then Arnold urged the appoint- 
ment of an Army air officer to co-ordinate all shore-based air 
operations under this Tenth Fleet; King did not immediately 
reject this proposal, but in detailed negotiations it became ap- 
parent that the difference between the Navy and the Air 
Forces on the meaning of "operational control" was irrecon- 
cilable. The Air Forces, strongly supported by Stimson and 
Marshall, believed that antisubmarine air operations must be 
co-ordinated and directed by an aggressive air commander 
like Air Marshal Slessor of the British Coastal Command, 
subject only to the most general guidance of his naval superior. 
Admiral King believed this concept to be wholly mistaken 
and insisted that air operations must be directly controlled in 
each area by the local naval commander. The impasse was 
complete, and finally, in June, General Marshall reached the 
conclusion that there was no future for the Army concept so 
long as the Navy retained final control of antisubmarine op- 
erations. In return for certain concessions in other fields of 
conflict, he turned over to the Navy, with Stimson's approval, 
the entire responsibility for antisubmarine air activity. The 
Army squadrons assigned to this mission were gradually with- 
drawn, and in November, 1943, two months later than it had 
at first promised, the Navy assumed full responsibility for the 
work. Stimson shared the disappointment of his British 
friends Churchill and Slessor that so much training should be 
so arbitrarily discarded, but he agreed with Marshall that it 
was no use to fight a battle in which grudging naval conces- 
sions would be no concessions at all, since full co-operation 
was the necessary condition of success. 

Meanwhile the crisis of the submarine war had passed; 
Allied air power, partly shore based and partly carrier based, 
had closed the North Atlantic gap in the spring, and had done 
such damage to the U-boat "wolf packs" that by June they 



514 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

had withdrawn almost entirely from the North Atlantic con- 
voy route. After that time the submarine was reduced, in Ad- 
miral King's words, "from menace to problem." 

In 1947, assessing the questions involved in this prolonged 
and mutually unsatisfactory conflict between the Army and 
the Navy, Stimson found himself convinced that on the tacti- 
cal issues the Army was proved right and the Navy wrong. 
The record of Allied antisubmarine activity in all areas where 
the Germans operated clearly demonstrated the effectiveness 
of aggressively employed air power. From 1942 onward and 
it was only in 1942 that air-borne radar began to be extensively 
used aircraft operating at sea destroyed more German sub- 
marines than did surface vessels, and more than five-sixths of 
the submarines destroyed from the air were killed by shore- 
based aircraft. Moreover, the vast majority of these shore- 
based kills were accomplished by aircraft flying under the 
control of Slessor's Coastal Command in accordance with the 
principles of air autonomy and aggressive search so long and 
vainly urged by Stimson on the American Navy. The early 
Navy notion that convoy escort was the only way of fighting 
the submarine was in Stimson's view completely exploded by 
the brilliant operations of the Navy's own hunter-killer 
groups in 1943 and afterwards, not to mention the shore-based 
campaigns of Coastal Command first in the Bay of Biscay and 
later in Norwegian waters. 

But the issue of tactics was not the most important matter to 
be reviewed. Far more important lessons were apparent to 
Stimson in the contest over antisubmarine warfare. The first 
was the importance of listening closely to the scientists. Scien- 
tific contributions to antisubmarine warfare were enormous, 
and they extended far beyond the merely technical. Scientists 
like Bowles and Bush proved themselves to be capable of 
sound strategic comment and of constructive proposals for the 
tactical control and use of antisubmarine weapons. They were 
far wiser than either naval or air officers who had become 
wedded to a limited strategic concept. 

The second lesson of the antisubmarine campaign was the 
critical importance of the doctrine of command responsibility. 
Much of the continuing failure of both the Army and the 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 515 

Navy in antisubmarine matters rose out of the absence of any 
central and clear-cut command. At least until 1943 the Navy 
Department was not organized as was the British Admiralty, 
with a vigorous and independent group of senior officers con- 
ducting antisubmarine warfare as a continuous campaign. 
There was no officer who could be held responsible for that 
mission and only that one; antisubmarine warfare, both in 
the Navy Department and in the Army's high command, was 
everyone's business and no one's. And if General Arnold's 
officers were thinking mainly of strategic air power, Admiral 
King's were primarily concerned with the Pacific. With rare 
exceptions, antisubmarine warfare received only the partial 
attention of the first-rate officers, while actual operations were 
left to commanders not always chosen from the top drawer. 
Comparing this arrangement with the method applied in 
Africa and Europe and the different theaters of the Pacific, 
Stimson concluded that it provided the proof, in failure, of 
the wisdom that set up the other theaters under single, strong, 
full-time commanders. 

A third important lesson was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
was an imperfect instrument of top-level decision. Certainly 
it represented a vast improvement over anything that had 
existed before, and on the whole it was astonishingly success- 
ful, but it remained incapable of enforcing a decision against 
the will of any one of its members. It was an exact counterpart 
in military terms of the Security Council later established by 
the United Nations; any officer, in a minority of one, could 
employ a rigorous insistence on unanimity as a means of de- 
fending the interests of his own service. Quite aside from the 
question of which service was right as to antisubmarine tactics, 
there was no justification for a situation in which the 
Army and the Navy worked at cross-purposes for more than 
a year, each appearing to the other as an ignorant, presump- 
tuous, interfering bungler. And if Marshall had been as nar- 
row a man as some previous Army Chiefs of Staff, the impasse 
might have continued throughout the war; the right of the 
Army to operate antisubmarine aircraft was one on which he 
could have stood his ground forever. Only the President was 
in a position to settle disagreements by a definite and final 



5i6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ruling, and Mr. Roosevelt's general position was that dis- 
agreements should be adjusted without forcing him to act as 
judge. This seemed to Stimson a sensible attitude, since the 
President could hardly be expected to take time for a thor- 
ough study of dozens of differences, large and small. He re- 
mained as a court of last appeal, and fear of his displeasure 
frequently forced compromise agreement in the Joint Chiefs 
of Staff. But the absence of any constantly operating and truly 
decisive authority placed a heavy obligation of self-restraint 
on the Joint Chiefs, and the whole system might well have 
broken down completely if all its members, and Marshall 
particularly, had not been determined that it should reach 
and enforce decisions at least on points of primary importance. 
Stimson was appalled at the thought of what might have hap- 
pened among the Joint Chiefs if Marshall had been replaced 
by any officer, however able, whose interests and attitudes 
were limited by a service viewpoint. 

The fourth and most important feature of the antisub- 
marine affair was that it provided an almost perfect example 
of the destructive effect of the traditional mutual mistrust of 
the two services. Though the focus of the discussion was a 
question of tactics, it was surrounded by all sorts of interserv- 
ice recriminations. It was unfortunate that the Army side of 
the question should have been mainly an Air Forces operation, 
for the Navy and the Air Forces had a mutual grudge of over 
twenty years' standing the Navy feared that the Air Forces 
wished to gain control of all naval aviation, while the Air 
Forces saw in the Navy's rising interest in land-based planes 
a clear invasion of their prescriptive rights. The Air Forces 
considered the Navy a backward service with no proper under- 
standing of air power; the Navy considered the Air Forces a 
loud-mouthed and ignorant branch which had not even mas- 
tered its own element. Thus it happened that many an incident 
which friendly commanders could have used as a signpost to 
improvement became instead a source of added bitterness. Al- 
though in many cases local and junior officers of both services 
established extremely friendly relations, what too often came 
to Army and Navy headquarters in Washington were emo- 
tionally embroidered reports of the incompetence of the other 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 517 

service. The simple fact of being under the Navy was no fun 
for the airmen, whose autonomy in action was their most jeal- 
ously guarded principle of combat, and that the Air Forces 
should be sinking submarines at all was to some naval officers 
an affront. What should have been simply a question of tactics 
thus became at all echelons a question of feelings, and on 
neither side was much attention given to the vital task of see- 
ing the other man's point of view. 

This matter of attitude seemed to Stimson the fundamental 
issue in the Army-Navy relationship. On the whole the war 
marked a new high point in mutual good feeling. Especially 
in their great joint ventures in the complex art of amphibious 
warfare the Army and the Navy learned to respect and like 
each other; a similar if less intense good feeling developed 
among the men in Washington who were of necessity thrown 
together in planning and supplying these vast overseas under- 
takings. But a strong residue of mutual disapproval remained. 
Stimson himself was not exempt. On October 20, 1942, at a 
meeting with Knox and Hull, "After I had expatiated on the 
fruits of the bombers, . . . Knox . . . rather unnecessarily put 
in the remark that the Navy didn't think much of high-alti- 
tude bombing anyhow. I then rose in my wrath and tore him, 
to pieces. In fact the debate was so hot I could see Hull pull- 
ing his legs in under his chair and generally gathering himself 
into a fighting position lest he be hit by the flying fragments!" 
The two Secretaries attacked each other's sore points, trading 
unpleasant opinions about bombers, MacArthur, Guadalcanal, 
and logistics. "But finally we wound up with a laugh and the 
smoke blew away." Though Stimson was by long training and 
predilection an Army man, Knox had no such background as 
a naval advocate ; this mutual jealousy was the daily and insist- 
ent atmosphere of the separate Departments, and it sank imper- 
ceptibly into the minds of the most balanced of men. 

In the first two years of the war Stimson strongly opposed 
the holding of public Army-Navy football games in large 
cities, on the grounds that such a major spectacle would eat up 
gasoline and other supplies better employed in warmaking. 
In 1944 he somewhat changed his tune, and although the main 
reason for this change was simply that a year of victories had 



Si8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

somewhat relaxed his insistence on austerity, there was a 
further thought in his mind. "The President wanted my advice 
as to whether or not he should shift the Army and Navy foot- 
ball game to New York. That comes a week from next Satur- 
day. For two years we have been having semiprivate football 
games at the homes of the two Academies . . . but now the pres- 
sure is for having it a public one. The fact that the Army has a 
very good football team this year and has a darned good chance 
of beating the Navy makes me a little more lenient towards it 
than I was before." (Diary, November 13, 1944) The game 
was held in New York, and the Army won, 23-7. 

3. UNIFICATION AND THE FUTURE 

The war was fought successfully without any important 
revision of the separated status of the two services from 
which all these troubles grew. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and 
a number of other boards and committees were bridges across 
the gap. Sometimes in the operating theaters these bridges 
became so numerous and solid that the gap almost disap- 
peared and then incautiously someone would assume that it 
did not exist and learn his mistake from a new outburst of feel- 
ing. To Stimson and others thinking of the future it seemed 
evident that the primary objective of the postwar period in 
military affairs must be to end this division of feeling. 

The difficulty of attaining such an objective became bru- 
tally clear in the spring of 1944, when a Select Committee of 
the House of Representatives began hearings on the contro- 
versial issue of "unification" of the armed forces. Stimson, like 
most of his War Department colleagues, believed that the 
consolidation of the armed forces into a single department 
would be enormously helpful in reducing friction and dupli- 
cation of effort. He saw it as a means of eliminating the waste 
of time and money involved in the necessarily cumbersome 
method of "co-operation," and as a way of insuring action 
when and if "co-operation" ceased to exist. But knowing that 
his friends "the well-known Admirals" were strongly opposed 
to unification, he was at first reluctant to let his Department 
be involved in public discussion of an issue on which feelings 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 519 

would surely run high. Only the surprising discovery that 
Knox strongly favored a single unified department overcame 
this objection. Then just as the Army had completed a de- 
tailed, statement of its position before the committee, Frank 
Knox died. His views were not shared by his successor, James 
V. Forrestal, who without directly opposing unification 
argued strongly against jumping at conclusions. Agreement 
between the Secretaries no longer existing, it was at once ap- 
parent that the hearings might become a free-for-all in which 
nothing but bitterness would be produced. Although Stimson 
and Forrestal agreed entirely that such a result must be 
avoided if possible, it was too late to stop the hearings; Stim- 
son duly testified, with caution and restraint, but in its later 
stages the discussion before the House committee painfully 
foreshadowed the remarkable shrillness of tone that for a time 
dominated the debate when it was resumed in 1946. 

But at last, in 1947, there was introduced in Congress a uni- 
fication bill which had the firm support of both the Army and 
the Navy. This successful reconciliation of divergent views 
Stimson considered a triumph for all concerned and particu- 
larly for President Truman, and in a long letter to Senator 
Chan Gurney he joined the battle for the bill's passage. This 
letter presents in full Stimson's views on unification. 

First he discussed the basic need as met by the new bill. 

". . . I consider this measure to be one of the most important 
peacetime forward steps ever proposed in our military his- 
tory. ... 

". . . Like many things which have been carefully worked 
out, the proposed measure is essentially quite simple. It 
creates a new 'National Defense Establishment, 7 within 
which the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force are to be in- 
cluded. For that Department it establishes a Secretary, and 
the functions and powers of this new official are the heart of 
the bill. 'Under the direction of the President, he shall estab- 
lish policies and programs for the National Defense Estab- 
lishment and for the departments and agencies therein; he 
shall exercise direction, authority, and control over such de- 
partments and agencies.' And he is to supervise and control as 
a co-ordinated whole the budgeted expenditures of the armed 



520 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

forces in this respect as in others the bill presents a striking 
parallel with the notable legislative reorganization achieved 
last year by the Congress. 

"The Secretary of National Defense is provided with the 
necessary military and civilian assistants ; he becomes Chair- 
man of a War Council; he is given authority over the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, which splendid engine of military skill and 
thinking is continued with its present general functions; he is 
given a Munitions Board and a Research and Development 
Board which will serve him as flexible instruments for the 
exercise of two critically important functions. . . . 

"It is my considered opinion that the new Secretary of Na- 
tional Defense will have it in his power to integrate our armed 
forces as they have never been integrated before. In World 
War II we accomplished great things by co-operation between 
two separate Departments, but from that experience we 
learned that co-operation is not enough. I will not rehearse the 
unhappy list of duplications, or the instances of friction and 
disagreement which then hampered our work. But I would 
emphasize that each succeeding emergency in the last fifty 
years has made heavier demands on our armed services. The 
element of economy in our use of armed force might well be 
critical in any future contest. It came nearer to being critical 
towards the end of this last war than I had dreamed likely 
during the years preceding the war. I do not mean economy 
in dollar terms (though in the long run we should greatly gain 
in that respect too under this bill), but rather that strategic 
economy which exerts maximum force with limited national 
resources. Without increased unity we cannot get that kind of 
economy; we will continue instead to operate with the waste- 
ful opulence that has characterized much of our work in the 
past. This new bill provides the framework for the increased 
unity we need." 

Then he turned to the fears of its opponents. 

"The Secretary of National Defense will be a powerful of- 
ficer. That is entirely proper. He cannot successfully exercise 
his functions without adequate and flexible power. But it 
should be observed that he is given no powers which do not 
already belong to the President as Commander in Chief. What 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 521 

this bill does is to delegate to a recognized officer of the Gov- 
ernment a part of the authority over the military establish- 
ment which in the end always belongs to the President. If it 
were possible today for any President to give his full attention 
to military affairs, this step would not be necessary. But we 
all know that the President even now is much overworked, 
and that he cannot permit himself to become entirely pre- 
occupied by his duties as Commander in Chief. . . . Under this 
bill the President as Chief Executive retains his basic powers 
unchanged; he is provided with a suitable officer for the 
proper exercise of these powers; that officer remains under 
his entire control. This appears to me to be a wholly proper 
and natural step, entirely in keeping with our best administra- 
tive tradition. 

"At the same time I see nothing in this bill that justifies any 
fear that tested and invaluable instruments of war like naval 
aviation or specifically Army aviation for that matter will 
be lightly and carelessly discarded. ... 

"In connection with this matter of specific fears and con- 
troversies, I can only repeat what I said to the Select Com- 
mittee of the Congress three years ago: 'I would like to stress, 
as a major point, the importance of considering this organiza- 
tion of the armed forces from the standpoint of fundamentals 
rather than details. If the basic plan of centralization can be 
determined upon, hundreds of vexing problems will fall into 
proper perspective. They will lose much of their controver- 
sial aspect and be decided as matters of specific planning 
rather than of primary policy.' " 

And finally he pointed out the fortunate circumstances in 
which the bill was presented and emphasized their impor- 
tance, drawing on his own experience for illustrations. 

"Not only is the bill a good one, but the time is ripe and the 
winds are fair for launching such a great reform. Political 
action is always in large measure a matter of time and cir- 
cumstance, and in this case the time and circumstance seem 
so conspicuously right that I should like to emphasize them 
in detail." He recalled the painful atmosphere which had 
dominated the discussion in 1944 and again in 1946, remark- 



522 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ing that "it began to appear that discussion of unification was 
serving merely to drive the services farther apart." 

"With great wisdom and judgment, the President withdrew 
the matter from immediate consideration and referred it to 
the War and Navy Departments for thorough study, insisting 
that divergences be reconciled. As study and discussion pro- 
ceeded ... it became possible to reduce areas of disagreement 
until the great common objective again dominated, and, as I 
understand it, the present bill has the hearty endorsement of 
the responsible officers, civilian and military, of both of our 
present service departments. 

"This fact is in itself of critical significance, as I think I can 
show by referring to a bit of War Department history with 
which I am personally familiar. When Elihu Root established 
the General Staff, integrating unifying, if you please the 
high command of the Army, he was faced by very decided 
military opposition from men in high administrative posts; 
but with the support of the top men of the Army and a major- 
ity of the Congress, he carried his work through successfully. 
Ten years later when the whole concept of the General Staff 
was violently challenged by an able administrative soldier of 
the old school, General Leonard Wood (as Chief of Staff) 
and I (as Secretary of War), as a team, were successful in 
defending the Root reforms. . . . When the civilians and the 
soldiers are in cordial and sympathetic agreement, each con- 
scious of his proper function and his proper relation to the 
other, there are few limits to the advances that can be 
made. . . . 

"With this sort of agreement and harmony existing, only 
one additional element is required to give life and meaning to 
the bill if enacted. That is, of course, the leadership and sup- 
port of the President, now to be exerted in the first instance 
through his Secretary of National Defense. The Root reforms 
depended on the firm backing of Presidents McKmley and 
Theodore Roosevelt; in our battle to preserve them General 
Wood and I should have lost without the courageous and un- 
derstanding help of President Taft; the extraordinary war- 
time co-operation of the Army and Navy in the recent world 
struggle depended in the end on the vision and courage of 



THE ARMY AND THE NAVY 523 

President Franklin Roosevelt. Without understanding and 
firmness at the White House, no progress can be made in mil- 
itary organization. Most fortunately we have as President a 
man who has fully demonstrated his grasp of the problem this 
new reform is designed to solve, and who has been himself a 
leader in securing agreement within the services. We may be 
certain that President Truman will search out for service as 
our first Secretary of National Defense the best man he can 
find for the job, and when he has found that man he will give 
him strong and intelligent support." 

Though it did not pass the congressional gantlet without 
some amendment, the Unification Bill was finally enacted in 
July, 1947, and James Forrestal, to Stimson's personal satis- 
faction, became on the following September 19 the country's 
first Secretary of Defense. The Army, the Navy and the Air 
Forces were thus at once separated and combined in a new 
organization for whose future Stimson had the highest hopes. 
The new act was not perfect, but it was an excellent first step. 
That it provided the framework for a better high command 
was certain. What was still more important, it provided a set- 
ting wherein, under firm and sympathetic leadership, the bit- 
terness and misunderstanding of the past might be ended. 
Under a single leader, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Forces 
could now learn, and be taught, to live together. The great 
gains of World War II might thus be consolidated, while a 
repetition of its occasional failures could be prevented, and 
Stimson earnestly hoped that the time would quickly come 
when the struggles discussed in this chapter, both serious and 
comic, would find no echo of recognition among the soldiers, 
sailors, and airmen of the United States. 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Army and the Grand Alliance 



WORLD WAR II was the first major experience of the 
United States in the political complexities of coalition 
warfare. In 1917 and 1918 the vast strength of America re- 
mained mainly potential. There was great importance in 
Pershing's stand for a united American Army, and there were 
lessons for naval officers in the relation between Sims and the 
British Admiralty, but neither of these experiences was ade- 
quate preparation for the extraordinary variety of problems 
presented to the Washington government in the years after 
Pearl Harbor problems created by the simple fact that among 
all the nations fighting against the Axis the United States 
possessed incomparably the largest amount of flexible military 
and economic strength. The military power of the U.S.S.R. 
was necessarily committed almost wholly to the vast eastern 
front; the persistent and skillful effort of the British was by 
1941 pinned down in major part to northwest Europe and 
Africa. Only the Americans had a free hand. 

To Stimson the record achieved by his country in the reso- 
lution of the problems thus created seemed on the whole 
magnificent. The greatest single set of decisions were those 
leading to the Normandy landing, already discussed in an 
earlier chapter. But the OVERLORD decision was in the main 
one of military strategy, although in securing its adoption 
there was much political negotiation. Several other problems 
presented more clearly the ticklish interrelation of military 
and political aspects which is so difficult for the ordinary 
democratic statesman to grasp and act upon. The great flair 
here shown by Franklin Roosevelt seemed to Stimson a 
blessing of Providence upon the American people; by 1940 

524 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 525 

the President had already shown his deep comprehension of 
the menace of Nazism, but only under the test of actual war 
was his talent as a war leader revealed. 

His success was triumphant, and it was substantially his 
own. In this chapter we shall deal with certain problems 
with which for one reason or another Stimson came into direct 
contact ; in these cases he at times held views widely differing 
from those of the President and indeed feared that the 
President was acting unwisely. But it would be wholly wrong 
to take these differences as illustrative of any basic difference 
over the political strategy of the war. In the main he was a 
loyal and sometimes surprised admirer of the force and skill 
with which Mr. Roosevelt almost by himself, for this was 
his nature laid out his course and led his countrymen 
along it. 

The central political decision of World War II was that 
it must be fought in an alliance as close as possible with Great 
Britain and Soviet Russia. Not once during the war was this 
decision questioned or any modification of it seriously con- 
sidered by Stimson or by any man whose views he knew 
among the leaders of the administration. The three nations, 
in American eyes, formed the indispensable team for victory 
over Germany. Together, with or without welcome and help- 
ful accessions of strength from smaller nations, they could 
not lose. Apart, or at cross-purposes, or with any one of them 
defeated, they could hardly win. It was thus the constant pur- 
pose of the American Government to do all that would 
achieve and cherish a cordial unity of action and so to 
reinforce its two great allies, from the vast American reservoir 
of material wealth, that each would press on with increasing 
power to a final combined victory. 

There was of course a marked distinction in the degree 
of genuine understanding aimed at and achieved by Amer- 
icans in dealing with their two major allies. Stimson's own 
.contacts with the British and the Russians were illustrative 
of the distinction. With the British, from the first, he estab- 
lished the kind of close and wholly confident connection that 
he had maintained ten years before with Ramsay MacDonald. 
The vehemence and heat with which he fought against British 



526 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

opposition to the Channel invasion was understandable only 
in the light of his complete confidence that between such fast 
friends there could be no final falling out. Stimson argued 
with Mr. Churchill more bluntly than he ever did with Mr. 
Roosevelt; he could cut loose at the Englishman as he never 
felt free to do with his chief. And he talked with English 
officers as easily as with his own Army leaders sometimes 
to get their advice and sometimes to give them his, in fairly 
vigorous terms. 

The Russian question was different. Stimson's direct contact 
with Russian matters was very slight until near the end of 
the war. In the earlier years, when the main American object 
was simply to help the Russians, his role was inconsiderable. 
In diplomatic negotiations he had no part; in Lend-Lease 
transactions he sometimes found himself the advocate of the 
Army's needs against those of the Russians; this was the 
necessary result of his duty to equip the Army, and implied 
no disagreement whatever with the policy of aid to Russia. 
Of course Russian visitors came to his office ; ordinarily these 
were merely formal calls, but occasionally Stimson had a 
chance to put in a word as in the following discussion of 
July 29, 1941 : "At ii :i8 I saw the Soviet Ambassador, Mr. 
Oumansky, a rather slick and unscrupulous gentleman I have 
been told, who used to belong to the OGPU the secret 
police of Russia and had had a rather brutal record. He 
came to pay his respects but, as I knew he would, brought 
in at the end a request for arms. He told me how important 
the battle in Russia was, and what great service the Russians 
were doing for the rest of the world. I told him I had no- 
doubt that was so but I said, 'Mr. Ambassador, I have no 
eyes to see the things that you tell me. You have taken away 
my eyes and until I get my eyes back, I cannot take the re- 
sponsibility of recommending giving away our weapons.' He 
said, c You mean your Attache should be allowed to go to the 
front?' I said, 'I mean just that.' That gave him a poser. . . ." 

Such posers were more verbal than practical, however. 
Whatever the American annoyance at Russian secretiveness, 
it was not United States policy to squabble over details, and 
Oumansky and his successors got more than they gave. With 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 527 

this policy of one-sided generosity Stimson had little to do, 
but during the first years its objectionable features were quite 
obscured by the supreme importance of saving the Russians 
from defeat. 

The real questions of American policy toward Russia went 
much deeper than such trivia. The great present goal was to 
help the Russians kill Germans. As they continued to fight 
effectively long beyond the most optimistic early estimates of 
most American intelligence officers, and as gradually a narrow 
but significant bridge of co-operation was constructed, it be- 
came clear that in their own strange way the Russians were 
magnificent allies. They fought as they promised, and they 
made no separate peace. 

In 1943 and 1944 Stimson's concern for a proper second 
front led him to a certain sympathy with Russian suspicion 
of Western motives ; not to open promptly a strong western 
front in France, he felt, would be to leave the real fighting 
to Russia. During the discussions at Washington in May, 
1943, Stimson told the President "that the argument on the 
other side reminded me of the story of Lincoln with regard 
to General Franz Sigel who Lincoln said was a pretty poor 
general who, although he couldn't skin the deer could at least 
hold a leg. [Those who oppose invasion] are trying to arrange 
this matter so that Britain and America hold the leg for 
Stalin to skin the deer and I think that will be dangerous 
business for us at the end of the war. Stalin won't have much 
of an opinion of people who have done that and we will not 
be able to share much of the postwar world with him." 
(Diary, May 17, 1943) 

But this fear was not realized; the alliance held together 
with each partner bearing a full load, and it was only in 
early 1945 that a cloud began to appear on the Russian hori- 
zon, as Stimson saw it. Nothing that happened in this later 
period seemed to him to bear against the wisdom and fore- 
sight of Mr. Roosevelt's decision to behave with complete 
friendliness and good will toward the Russians while the 
Allies were at war. 

Thus on the central political issue of the war alliance with 
Britain and Russia Stimson was a wholehearted supporter 



528 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of the President, without having any major part in the 
execution of policy. His principal activity in the field of 
wartime international policy, beyond the question of the 
Channel invasion, fell in three lesser fields into which he was 
brought by his Army responsibilities and by his special 
interest : China, France, and military government in Europe. 
In none of these cases did he have a continuous or determinant 
part, but his experience in each was illustrative of his own 
attitudes and of some of the difficulties faced by a necessarily 
inexperienced and unnecessarily personalized administration. 

I. STILWELL AND CHINA 

In Anglo-American grand strategy the war against Germany 
came first. Second came the great "triphibious" movement 
across the Pacific toward the Japanese island empire. The 
China-Burma-India theater was a poor third. Yet in its strate- 
gic and political significance this part of the world was of enor- 
mous importance ; in a situation of extraordinary complexity it 
constantly offered the possibility of striking military and 
political success, at a remarkably low cost. For nearly three 
years Stimson and Marshall were leaders in an effort to 
achieve this success, and although their greatest hopes were 
not realized, the effort was not wholly barren, and in both 
its achievements and its failures it was extremely instructive. 

Strategically, the object of American policy in this area 
was to keep China in the war, and so to strengthen her that 
she might exact a constantly growing price from the Japanese 
invader. The reinforcement of China depended on the main- 
tenance of a line of supply through Burma, if necessary by 
air, if possible by land. But Burma was a part of the British 
Empire, and it was especially important to the British as the 
last buffer between India and Japanese aggression. There 
were thus three major Allied Nations whose respective in- 
terests came to a common point in Burma, and although all 
three were presumably agreed on the vital necessity of win- 
ning the Japanese war, only the United States, of the three, 
framed its policy in that area with military victory as its single 
object. And it was the peculiar difficulty of the American 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 529 

policy that it was dependent upon a British base and Chinese 
manpower. The situation was still further complicated by the 
traditional mutual distaste of the British and the Chinese, to 
both of whom any failure of the other was a source of racial 
satisfaction. 

Long before Pearl Harbor the American Government 
established in Chungking a military mission. With American 
entry into the war, and the beginning of a Japanese cam- 
paign against Burma, it became evident that the American 
interest required in this theater a military representative of 
pre-eminent quality. Because of his intense interest in the 
Chinese situation, Stimson played a conspicuous part in the 
selection of this representative, and of few things was he more 
proud than of his share in the eventual choice of General 
Joseph W. Stilwell. 

Stilwell's name was not the first suggested. The post was 
indeed offered, in January, 1942, to one of the Army's most 
senior generals. But after getting into a row with General 
Marshall, the officer under consideration submitted a mem- 
orandum of requirements which indicated a predominant 
interest in his own and not the national advantage. The 
response of the Secretary of War was definite. 

"He had brought me a paper which he had drawn in 
which he virtually took the position that he did not think the 
role in China which I had offered him was big enough for his 
capabilities. The paper said a good deal more than that but 
that was what it boiled down to. I told him how much dis- 
appointed I was at the attitude that he had taken; that I 
myself had planned out the position which he was to take and 
that it seemed to me that it would lead to most important work 
for his country; that its sphere depended a good deal on his 
own abilities but that I had had confidence that he would 
be able to seize the opportunity to expand the importance of 
the place into a very important sphere. I showed him that 
he would have had the full support not only of myself but 
of Marshall and the General Staff. I told him I could not 
help contrasting the position he was taking with what I con- 
sidered my own duty when I was offered a position in the Far 
East which I did not desire and which I felt constrained to 



530 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

accept even in the nonemergent times of peace, because my 
government had selected me for it. I then closed the inter- 
view." (Diary, January 13, 1942) 

Although the general took it all back the next day and said 
"he would do anything I wanted him to do," his mistake was 
not one which Stimson could readily forgive. The job in 
China and Burma would require a man who believed in it. 
And fortunately on the same evening Stimson found such 
a man. 

"In the evening on my request General Stilwell came to 
see me. . . . Marshall had suggested that I had better see him 
with a view to China, and I had a long talk with him over the 
fire in my library about the Chinese situation. I was very 
favorably impressed with him. He is a very quick-witted and 
alert-minded man. He knows China thoroughly and for more 
than two years campaigned with the Chinese armies against 
Japan in 1937-8-9. In half an hour he gave me a better first- 
hand picture of the valor of the Chinese armies than I had 
ever received before. Of this valor he had a very high opinion. 
He said that practically the whole success of my Chinese 
proposition would depend on whether or not Chiang Kai-shek 
would, as Soong has promised, give command of any of his 
troops to an American. This he has always refused hitherto. 
With that permission Stilwell said that the possibilities of 
the Chinese proposition were unbounded and he was very 
enthusiastic about it. ... So I went to bed with a rather re- 
lieved feeling that I had discovered a man who will be very 
useful." (Diary, January 14, 1942) 

After checking his opinion with General Frank McCoy 
and of course with Marshall, Stimson determined that Stil- 
well was the man for China and cleared his appointment with 
the President. Within three weeks Stilwell was on his way 
to what Stimson later judged as the most difficult task assigned 
to any American in the entire war. 

Stimson and Marshall did what they could to get Stilwell 
off to a good start. In negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek it 
was agreed that Stilwell should be Chiang's Chief of Staff, 
and the harmony of feeling and purpose which appeared to 
result from this agreement was heartening to the War De- 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 531 

partment's leaders in a time largely barren of encouragement. 

On February 3, 1942, Stimson went before the House 
Foreign Affairs Committee in executive session to speak in 
favor of a ^oomillion-dollar loan to China. It was a time 
for advocacy, and the advocacy came easily to Stimson, for 
the Chinese venture was one in which he deeply believed. 

"I worked pretty carefully over what I should say to the 
committee and it went off, I think, better than almost any 
hearing I have ever had in Congress. I outlined the difficult 
situation we were in in the southwestern Pacific, outnumbered 
in the air and sea and on the ground, and with immensely 
long lines of communication. I pointed out China's strategic 
position towards that area, including Indo-China, Thailand, 
Malaya, and Burma. I gave them a picture of the fighting 
character of the Chinese troops as it had been given me by 
General Stilwell. I told of China's unique relations with us 
and her unique attitude and confidence towards our govern- 
ment as demonstrated in many ways as I had observed it in 
the Philippines. I described the onslaught which was now 
being made by the Japanese to pull down Chiang Kai-shek 
upon whose character and influence rested the Chinese de- 
fense, and then I told what we were doing recently in our 
negotiations with Chiang and how he had promised to make 
our nominee chief of his staff. I told them that, while nobody 
could prophesy events in war, this represented to me a unique 
opportunity to play for the highest stakes for the Far East 
and that the success or failure of the war might depend upon 
this act; and in the light of the billions we had spent for less 
favorable opportunities, I thought that if America refused to 
take this chance, she would not deserve to win the war. The 
committee listened attentively throughout and, when I closed, 
there was a dead silence. No one asked me a question. The 
chairman turned to me and said that the committee was 
paying me the highest compliment it could pay, not even 
asking a single question on my report." (Diary, February 

3, 1942) 

If this statement had eloquence and the response from 
those present indicated that it did it was because this was a 
subject on which Stimson felt very strongly. The great tradi- 



532 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tion of American friendship with the people of China was 
one in which his personal part had not been small, and, as he 
faced the challenge of the Japanese warmakers, he saw that 
tradition as a basis from which a great military triumph 
might be created and of course in such a triumph the tradi- 
tion itself would be still further strengthened for service to 
both nations and the world after victory. Nothing that hap- 
pened in the war was more disheartening to him than the 
gradual shrinking of these hopes. 

This book is unfortunately not the place for a detailed 
study of the history of the China-Burma-India Theater. To 
Stimson that history unfolded principally as the saga of Joe 
Stilwell, fighting heroically against overwhelming odds. Stil- 
well's central military objective was to strengthen the Chinese 
armies and bring their force to bear on the Japanese in Asia. 
His enemies were of four kinds Japanese, Chinese, British, 
and American. 

The Japanese took Burma in early 1942, cutting off the 
only land route to China. The recapture of northern Burma 
thus became to Stilwell the goal of first priority. Without a 
road into China for the shipment of arms and supplies, the 
vast potential strength of the Chinese armies could never be 
developed into reality. But the recapture of Burma was not a 
primary goal of the Chinese and the British. 

The Chinese Government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai- 
shek defies any brief analysis. Of its firm opposition to the 
Japanese there was never any doubt, and the administration in 
Washington was fully sensitive to the extraordinary sufferings 
which the Chinese had endured in five years of war before 
1942. But even Stimson, who had studied as Secretary of State 
the twisted and personalized operations of Chinese nationalist 
politics, was astonished at the number of obstacles placed by 
Chinese leaders in the path of General Stilwell. Some of the 
obstacles were those typical of all personal government; 
others were rooted in the complexities of Kuomintang policy. 

Stilwell, commanding Chinese troops in the first Burma 
campaign, found that his Chinese subordinates constantly re- 
ceived tactical instructions from the distant autocrat in Chung- 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 533 

king, and Chiang's tactical skill was in Stilwell's view almost 
nonexistent. After the retreat from Burma, when he turned his 
energies to the creation of an effective Chinese force, Stilwell 
found his work constantly delayed or blocked by Chiang's 
inability to understand the meaning of modern training. Even 
after Stilwell had made a success of his training center for 
Chinese troops in Ramgahr, India, he found the Chinese still 
slow to co-operate in extending the new training methods to 
China proper. The entire Chinese war establishment was 
riddled with graft and personal power politics; these factors 
limited what Chiang could do if he would, and his intense 
preoccupation with the perpetuation of his own power was a 
still further limitation. To Stilwell the Chinese war ministry 
was "medieval" and the adjective was accurately used ; balanc- 
ing and rebalancing the semi-subordinate warlords, blind to 
the meaning of training and supply, innocent of any concern 
for its enlisted soldiers, squeezing and squeezed in the worst 
Chinese tradition, the war ministry, and Chiang Kai-shek too, 
adopted the attitude that China had already done her part. 
They passed their days and nights in pleading for clouds of 
airplanes and swarms of tanks, constantly insisting to the 
Western world that 'America must help her faithful ally.' 
But they would not help themselves. 

The position and purpose of the British were very different, 
but their effect on Stilwell's work was much the same. The 
initial failure of British forces in Malaya and Burma was 
a shocking blow to the prestige of the Empire; the repair of 
this damaged prestige at once became a primary objective 
of British policy. But unfortunately the British were not 
agreed among themselves as to the best means for attaining 
this objective; few of them shared the conviction of such 
officers as Major-General Orde C. Wingate that the way to 
serve the British interest was to show first-class fighting 
quality against the Japanese, and do it quickly. The caution 
and defeatism which had led to the original debacle were 
never fully dissipated; even so gallant and dashing an officer 
as Lord Mountbatten, dispatched by Mr. Churchill with the 
specific purpose of putting in "some new punch to it" (Diary 
on conversation with Churchill, May 22, 1943), was not 



534 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

able to reverse this attitude entirely. Nor did the British 
agree with Stilwell on the importance of reopening the Burma 
Road, which after all led to a China they mistrusted, and 
not to Singapore. Stilwell's persistent faith in the potentiali- 
ties of the Chinese soldier was not shared by most Englishmen 
in India. 

But to Stimson the most trying of all Stilwell's problems 
was the constant undercutting to which he was subjected by 
Americans. Although the degree of their difficulty had not 
been correctly estimated, the British and Chinese obstacles 
to his mission had been foreseen when Stilwell was first sent 
out. Stimson could not share the disillusioned rancor of many 
Americans who faced these problems for the first time and 
reached hasty conclusions about the wickedness of their allies. 
The Chinese in China and the British in India were dealing 
with a situation whose complexity was far beyond anything 
in American experience, and while Stimson believed that both 
groups were false to their own interests in much of their 
opposition to Stilwell, he was prepared to face their failures 
without bitterness. Toward the Americans who hampered 
Stilwell he was less charitable. 

American opposition to Stilwell was partly tactical and 
partly personal. Tactically, opposition came mainly from the 
Air Forces, whose commander in China was Major General 
Claire Chennault. It was the view of Chennault and his many 
American supporters that Stilwell's insistence on a first prior- 
ity for the Burma campaign was not correct. They argued that 
the bulk of the supplies carried by air across the Hump into 
China should be used not for Stilwell's ground-force training 
center in Yunnan but rather for the operations of Chennault's 
Fourteenth Air Force. To Stilwell, Marshall, and Stimson 
this view appeared wholly wrong. They feared that much 
activity from unprotected air bases would merely stimulate a 
heavy Japanese land campaign against Chennault's airfields. 
But this possibility did not disturb the airmen; Chennault 
even argued that his aircraft would be able to repel any such 
attack. In spite of all opposition Chennault's view was ap- 
proved by the Washington Conference of May, 1943. Stilwell 
himself was called to the conference to state his case, but his 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 535 

advocacy was unsuccessful. His build-up of Chinese land 
forces was once more delayed, this time by the decision of 
Franklin Roosevelt. 

Tactical disagreements are inevitable in war. Stimson was 
to find his dire prophecies fully confirmed in the Japanese 
attack of 1944, which overran seven of the principal bases of 
the Fourteenth Air Force, but the tactical mistake of the 
Washington Conference was a minor matter compared to the 
political errors and personal activities which came before and 
after it. 

More than any other American theater commander in the 
war, Stilwell required the constant and vigorous political 
support of his own government, and less than any other com- 
mander did he get it. Engaged as he was in a great effort to 
make China strong almost against her will, he was bound to 
find himself frequently in the disagreeable position of telling 
unpleasant truths to an autocrat. Americans like Chennault 
and some of his political-minded associates, on the other hand, 
were in the position of advocating tactics which suited the 
politics and strategic concepts of the Generalissimo; Chiang 
was happy to accept serenely the view that American air 
power would defeat the Japanese. Still other Americans, 
preoccupied with the intense poverty and economic weakness 
of China, tended to think largely in terms of loans and civilian 
supplies, and this too was a language which the Generalissimo 
understood and approved. What to Stimson seemed unforgiv- 
able was that many of these Americans allowed their differ- 
ences with Stilwell over tactics or purpose so to weight their 
loyalty that they joined in and even encouraged the efforts 
of Chiang Kai-shek to undermine Stilwell's authority and 
weaken his support from Washington. And to Stimson it was 
not surprising, although terribly disappointing, that all this 
intrigue was in the end effective in the mind of President 
Roosevelt, although in defense of Stilwell General Marshall 
acted with even more than his usual wisdom and energy. 

Stilwell, unfortunately, never really "made his number" 
with the President. Although Mr. Roosevelt was by no means 
blind to the weaknesses of the Chinese Government, he was 
unschooled in the details on which Stilwell's tactical and 



536 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

political position was founded, and he was tied by personal 
sympathy to the support of Chennault. For his information 
on China he often depended on "personal representatives" 
who were usually easy dupes of the wonderfully charming 
circle around the throne at Chungking. He thus never gave to 
Stilwell the freedom of action and automatic backing which 
he so courageously accorded to his commanders in other 
theaters. Stilwell to him remained a somewhat testy, if ob- 
viously loyal, soldier who had some strange attraction for 
the War Department. It seemed doubtful to Stimson whether 
the President ever realized how much his own personal 
emissaries and his willingness to hear attacks on Stilwell con- 
tributed to the latter's difficulties. The only "emissary" to 
China throughout the war whose work seemed to Stimson 
truly helpful was Somervell, who happened on the scene in 
October, 1943, during one of Chiang's most violent outbreaks 
against Stilwell. With the aid of Mme. Chiang and some of 
her remarkable family Somervell pulled the Generalissimo 
round. Most of the other visitors, sometimes in ignorance, 
sometimes on the basis of definite personal instructions from a 
President playing by ear, only made matters worse. Stilwell 
thus never was able to speak as the voice of the United States 
war effort in Asia ; he was only one side of it. 

The last act in StilwelPs mission was played in October, 
1944. By that time Stilwell had fully justified his insistence 
on a Burma campaign by his brilliant advance in north 
Burma, culminating in the capture of Myitkyina this was 
one of the great and insufficiently noticed military epics of 
the war. But none of this satisfied Chiang, who had grown to 
hate Stilwell even as Stilwell had grown to hate him. 

On October 3 Stimson summarized the matter as he saw it: 
"After the daily conference with the Operations and Intelli- 
gence Staff, the morning was spent in preparing myself for 
my luncheon with the President; also in discussing with Gen- 
eral Marshall the crisis in China. This last is rapidly grow- 
ing more and more serious. The Japanese are advancing and 
have already made it necessary for us to evacuate two of our 
advance bases for our airplanes. By this they have already 
pushed us out of range of some of our important targets in 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 537 

Japan. The Chinese Government of Chiang Kai-shek is get- 
ting more and more difficult to deal with. Not only has he 
failed to back Stilwell up but he has now again requested that 
we relieve him. Marshall and the Staff had prepared a sharp 
rejoinder for the President to send declining to do so, but the 
President has declined so far to send it. Stilwell has been the 
one successful element of the three forces that have been sup- 
posed to co-operate in Burma. The British dragged their feet, 
and Mountbatten last spring almost as soon as he got there 
sent us word that he wanted to have the campaign go over 
until after the monsoon. If we had accepted that, we would 
not yet have begun. On the other hand, Chiang Kai-shek has 
several times interfered with the Yunnan forces of Chinese 
whom he had promised to send and did send as far as the Sal- 
ween River. In between these two hesitating and halting 
forces, Stilwell with his three American-trained Chinese di- 
visions coming down the Ledo Road, and Wingate and Mer- 
rill with their air troops and raiders flying in to help, have 
brought victory out of hesitation and defeat. The British, 
stung by their example, have at last thrown the Japanese out 
of Imphal and our troops are well down near the Irrawaddy 
River. Stilwell has taken Myitkyina, and north Burma is vir- 
tually free of the Japanese. This campaign in all the difficul- 
ties of the monsoon has been a triumphant vindication of Stil- 
well's courage and sagacity. He had been pecked at from both 
sides, carped at by the British from India, and hamstrung at 
every moment by Chiang Kai-shek. Now the Japanese in 
China, stung by these defeats in Burma, have called their main 
forces into action in China and are closing in against the reg- 
ular Chinese armies. If Chiang Kai-shek had supported Stil- 
well, we should have had a well-trained nucleus of these Chi- 
nese troops to meet them. As it is, they are still impotent Chi- 
nese, untrained and badly led. Incidentally, this result on both 
sides has shown the wisdom of Stilwell's diagnosis a year and 
a half or two years ago when he insisted that we must have 
ground bases and ground troops in China, well trained, to de- 
feat just such an attack of Japanese; and on the other hand, at 
the same time Chennault was insisting that he could beat and 
drive off the Japanese attack by the use of air alone. Chen- 



538 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

nault has been given almost twice as much in the way of equip- 
ment over the Hump as he asked for and yet he is now failing 
abjectly to stop the Japanese. On the other hand, Stilwell 
fighting against all these obstacles, British incompetence and 
sluggishness, Chinese disloyalty, and the lack of supplies over 
the Hump line which Chennault's demands made necessary, 
has provided the only success in the whole horizon. One of our 
difficulties throughout has been the attitude of the President. 
He has insisted on sending his own people there . . . and (ex- 
cept Pat Hurley whom we suggested to him) they have all 
been disloyal to Stilwell and have all joined hands with his de- 
tractors. They have all joined in supporting Chennault's views 
and insisting that he be given a chance to save China in the 
air. Several times the President suggested that Stilwell should 
be relieved. Marshall and I have fought for him steadily and 
hard throughout. Now the issue is up again and the President 
again is siding against Stilwell. Marshall today said that if 
we had to remove Stilwell he would not allow another Ameri- 
can general to be placed in the position of Chief of Staff and 
Commander of the Chinese armies, for it was so evident that 
no American would be loyally supported. I am inclined to go 
farther. The amount of effort which we have put into the 
'Over the Hump' airline has been bleeding us white in trans- 
port airplanes it has consumed so many. Today we are ham- 
strung in Holland and the mouth of the Scheldt River for lack 
of transport planes necessary to make new air-borne flights in 
that neighborhood. The same lack is crippling us in northern 
Italy. This effort over the mountains of Burma bids fair to 
cost us an extra winter in the main theater of the war. And, in 
spite of it all, we have been unable to save China from the 
present Japanese attack owing to the failure to support Stil- 
well in training adequate Chinese ground forces to protect 
Kunming." 

All this was a summary of what Stimson was prepared to 
say to the President. He never said it, for Mr. Roosevelt was 
not well that day, and in a two-hour conference Stimson had 
quite enough to do in discussing eight other matters, of which 
one was pressingly important. (See p. 580.) This seemed an 
illustration in specific terms of the losses incurred through 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 539 

Mr. Roosevelt's constant effort to keep all the threads in his 
own hands. One man simply could not do it all, and Franklin 
Roosevelt killed himself trying. 

And by this time, too, the President's relation to Stilwell 
was water under the bridge. Chiang Kai-shek was prepared 
to insist on Stilwell's recall as a point of personal privilege, 
and to this position there could now be no answer. Mr, Roose- 
velt indeed felt more kindly to Stilwell at this time than he 
had ever felt previously, but it was too late. Greater than any 
single man or policy was the basic necessity for maintaining 
the wartime alliance with China, and it no longer seemed 
possible to keep both Stilwell and friendship with Chiang. 
Two weeks later Stilwell was recalled by Marshall and his 
great talents were put to other uses, first as chief of the Army 
Ground Forces, and then as commanding general of Mac- 
Arthur's Tenth Army. Stimson surrendered for good his bright 
hopes for a real rejuvenation of the Chinese forces. China be- 
came to him a definitely limited commitment; in the later 
operations of General Wedemeyer he had no important part. 

In assessing the Stimson-Marshall-Stilwell policy, it was 
not easy for Stimson to be dispassionate. It seemed clear that 
if Chinese and British leaders had shared the American view, 
the result could only have been to the advantage of all three 
nations. Had Chiang Kai-shek permitted Stilwell to carry 
out his training program on the scale and in the manner that 
Stilwell originally planned, he must surely have found him- 
self, at the end of the war, with a vastly stronger army, of 
whose military reputation there could have been no doubt. 
Such support for Stilwell would have required a vigorous 
purge of the incompetent and the dishonest in Chiang's mili- 
tary entourage, but there were able young officers to take the 
place of those removed. It would also have required a shift 
in Chiang's whole attitude, which remained throughout the 
war what Stilwell had described in 1942 as that of an igno- 
rant, suspicious, feudal autocrat with a profound but miscon- 
ceived devotion to the integrity of China and to himself as her 
savior. But his failure to make this shift was stupid, for the 
strength of nationalist China could be measured in direct pro- 
portion to her escape from a corrupted feudalism. 



540 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

As for the British, there was no real profit for them in a 
policy of constant delay and inaction, as many Englishmen 
clearly understood. Stimson would have liked to see his friend 
Churchill as theater commander in India; that rugged old 
champion of empire would hardly have countenanced the 
passive and Fabian attitudes that hung like a pall over his 
subordinates in the Far East. Mr. Churchill might not have 
shared Stimson's view that it was blind folly for the British 
to act as if China, Burma, and India had not changed since 
1800, but he would never have permitted the imperial tradi- 
tion to be tarnished by a stolid insistence that action was 
impossible. 

Washington's failure to support Stilwell was to Stimson a 
clear example of badly co-ordinated policy, but he was forced 
to admit that for that failure Stilwell's own vigorous distaste 
for diplomacy was partly responsible. 

Stilwell's mission was to train Chinese and fight Japan. For 
this function he was equipped as was no other general in any 
Allied army. On the other hand, he was no diplomat. It 
seemed to Stimson unsound to assume that "Vinegar Joe's" 
bluntness was the cause of his differences with Chiang and 
Chennault and the British; the differences were deeper than 
manners. Yet Stilwell could have done much to moderate 
feeling against him if he had possessed the endless patience 
and self-control of Marshall. And if he had been a careful 
and persuasive advocate, rather than a brilliant soldier with 
a passionate but inarticulate loyalty to his job, he would per- 
haps not have failed at Washington in May, 1943, in his great- 
est single chance to win the President's personal backing. But 
this was asking a great deal, and if Stimson had any regret 
about his support of Stilwell it was that his own work in ex- 
plaining and defending the general to the President was not 
good enough. 

And if, in the larger sense, Stilwell's mission was a failure, 
there were yet in it many redeeming points of success. China 
under Chiang did stay in the war; Stilwell did prove that 
Chinese troops well trained and led could match the valor 
of soldiers anywhere; he did clear the Ledo Road to China 
(rightly renamed the Stilwell Road) ; most of all, he left to 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 541 

the American Army a matchless record of devotion to duty 
and professional skill. 

To Stimson the relief of Stilwell was a "terribly sad end- 
ing" to a great effort. His admiration and personal affection 
for Stilwell had constantly increased through nearly three 
years. Knowing the Secretary's personal interest in his mission, 
Stilwell had written to Stimson a series of letters (some of 
them in longhand) which gave the full measure of the man 
his insight and understanding of the Orient, his imaginative 
grasp of warmaking, his modesty, and what General Marshall 
called his "amazing vigor." This was a man who could refer 
to his extraordinary retreat from Burma in 1942 with a 
single laconic sentence, "I then picked up my headquarters 
group and brought them out." This man's personal vision 
created a new army almost in spite of its own government, 
in the face of the skepticism and obstructionism of most 
Englishmen and many Americans; yet to him jungle fighting 
was "a heavenly relief" from planning and politics. Certainly, 
whatever else it was, Stilwell's record in Asia was the record 
of a great American soldier. On February 10, 1945, Stimson 
decorated Stilwell with the Legion of Merit and an oak-leaf 
cluster to the Distinguished Service Medal. "I was partic- 
ularly happy to lay this encomium on Stilwell's hard and 
terrific work in Burma and in China and so I read the two 
citations myself and made a few comments to Stilwell which 
I think he appreciated. I said that I thought he had had the 
toughest job of any of our generals and that I had never 
conveyed one of these medals with such pleasure as I had in 
doing this." 

2. FRANCE DEFEAT, DARLAN, DE GAULLE, AND DELIVERANCE 

The fall of France, in June, 1940, was to Stimson the most 
shocking single event of the war, and during the five years 
that followed, dealing with French affairs as they stood after 
this catastrophe, he was constantly aware of the essentially 
tragic character of the whole experience of a great and proud 
nation in defeat. Very little of his connection with the French 



542 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

in this period was wholly pleasant; in almost every problem 
there stood forth a painful choice of evils. 

France after the armistice in 1940 became at once a battle- 
ground of wills, centering around the Vichy government of 
Marshal Petain. The names and actions of the Frenchmen 
who were most conspicuous at Vichy were profoundly disap- 
pointing to Stimson. The apparent treachery of Pierre Laval 
astonished and deeply pained him this was not what he 
would have expected from the practical and direct young 
Frenchman he had known nine years before. The position of 
Petain he viewed with more sympathy; whatever his errors of 
policy and whatever his failings from simple senility, Petain 
in Stimson's view was an honest servant of France. But Petain 
became in 1940 the center of a two-year contest for the remain- 
ing strength of France ; in this contest the whole effort of the 
American Government was to prevent France from joining 
the New Order, with the major specific objectives of blocking 
German expansion into French North Africa and German 
capture of the French Fleet. 

With this policy Stimson wholly agreed. It was a policy in 
which he had no active part, but as he understood it Mr. 
Roosevelt and Hull, through Ambassador Leahy and others, 
were exerting all of their political and diplomatic skill to 
strengthen Petain's will to resist German demands, while at 
the same time they were encouraging separate French agencies 
of defense in North Africa. 

In the autumn of 1942, in preparation for the North African 
invasion, the' American Government undertook ,a most com- 
plicated diplomatic and secret-service negotiation designed 
to produce a friendly French reception to the invaders. After 
pursuing a course so complex that Stimson, a highly interested 
observer, was never fully aware of all its ins and outs, this 
operation reached a quite unexpected climax three days after 
the landings, in the so-called "Darlan deal," which became one 
of the most violently controversial decisions of the war. 

Stimson's view of the Darlan affair was throughout abso- 
lutely definite and clear, and in his view the outburst of criti- 
cism directed against it by his countrymen was a disturbing 
illustration of the political ignorance and the ideological 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 543 

naivete of many kind-hearted Americans. That Darlan had 
an unsavory record Stimson fully understood. But the im- 
portant fact in November, 1942, was that Darlan and only 
Darlan was able to issue an effective cease-fire order and to 
swing to the side of the invading armies the armed forces and 
the civil administration of French North Africa. In a vast 
and precarious military enterprise, squeamishness about the 
source of such considerable help was in Stimson's view absurd. 

The number and quality of those who disagreed was aston- 
ishing, and Stimson promptly found it necessary to undertake 
an energetic campaign in support of General Eisenhower's 
decision. On November 16, at McCloy's suggestion, he argued 
the case at Woodley to a small group of doubtful administra- 
tion leaders. "I gave them all a little talk, pointing out first 
the hazardous nature of our operation in North Africa and 
the perilous condition in which our troops would have been 
in case there had been any delay caused by the obstruction of 
the French, to say nothing of the loss of lives unnecessarily on 
both the American and the French sides. ... I read them the 
telegram of Eisenhower in full, setting out admirably the 
reasons for the performance. 1 I pointed out to them that this 
was a temporary military arrangement, that the Army could 
not make foreign policy. . . . Finally after grunts and groans 
... I think I sent them home reconciled." (Diary, November 
1 6, 1942) That same evening, hearing that Wendell Willkie 
was about to attack the agreement, Stimson telephoned to 
Willkie and did what he could to dissuade him; that a man 
of Willkie's stature should attack Eisenhower's stand seemed 
to Stimson very dangerous. "I . . . told him flatly that, if he 
criticized the Darlan agreement at this juncture, he would 
run the risk of jeopardizing the success of the United States 
Army in North Africa and would be rendering its task very 
much more difficult." Willkie reluctantly withheld his attack 
for the time being, expressing himself forcefully, however, 
a little later when the immediate crisis had passed. 

With the firm support of the President, the Darlan agree- 
ment was maintained, and until his assassination in December 



message is paraphrased in full in William L. Langer, Our Vichy Gamble, 
Knopf, 1947, pp. 357-360. 



544 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Admiral Darlan remained a very useful military support to 
General Eisenhower. Stimson was so placed as to see the im- 
portance of this military support more clearly than most 
Americans, and it was with real regret that he learned of 
Darlan's death. Whatever his sins, the Admiral in his last 
months did effective service in helping to fight the war. 

Yet in looking back it can hardly be denied that Darlan's 
death was in some ways a relief to United States policy. 
Darlan had been taken up purely as a military expedient; 
there was no easy way of letting him down when he had served 
his purpose. His continued existence as the French leader in 
North Africa would almost surely have been a powerful 
embarrassment to the United States during the liberation of 
France; for his crime of collaboration with the Germans 
there could be no forgiveness by the French people, no matter 
what his achievements in Africa, or what the explanation he 
might give to Allied leaders. 

But even this future embarrassment of a living Darlan 
would have been a light price for his services in Africa, as 
Stimson saw it. The North African venture was not a massive 
riskless attack by skilled and overwhelming forces; it was a 
daring and imaginative improvisation undertakeA with full 
knowledge of its great risks and with high hopes for surprising 
success. The cutting of risks and the increase of hopes which 
came from Darlan's adherence might well have been the 
margin of success, and success for American arms in their 
first great venture against the Nazis was a military gain whose 
meaning could hardly be overestimated. And Darlan after all 
could never have become a Frankenstein's monster; even 
before his death the march of events had shifted the balance 
of bargaining strength to his disadvantage, and he was learn- 
ing that he held his power only on sufferance. If he had lived, 
he would have been an embarrassment but not a danger. 

No one in the American Government understood the Darlan 
affair more thoroughly than Franklin Roosevelt. On the night 
of his conversation with Willkie, Stimson telephoned the 
President to tell what he had done. "He was very nice about 
it; said he was glad I had done it, and told me of a Balkan 
quotation which he had found which had rather aptly fitted 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 545 

the present situation. It was somewhat to the effect that, if the 
devil offered to help you over a bridge, it was just as well to 
let him do so but not to continue to walk with him on the 
other side." (Diary, November 16, 1942) Later Stimson 
"thought up ... a new analogy for the Darlan case, namely 
the story in the Bible of Joshua sending the spies to Jericho 
and their making a pact with Rahab the harlot which was 
ratified by Joshua, and I told the President of this analogy 
and he roared with delight over it." (Diary, December n, 
1942) It was in his warmhearted and unhesitating support 
of his soldiers on such trying issues as this one that Mr. Roose- 
velt earned the particular affection of his Secretary of War. 

The death of Darlan led to a brief interregnum under 
General Henri Giraud, an officer whose chivalrous devotion 
to France was only matched by his lack of political skill. 
Giraud was soon succeeded in North Africa by General 
Charles de Gaulle, the man who had been first to raise the 
standard of French resistance in 1940. Increasingly, through 
1943 and 1944, De Gaulle's Committee of National Liberation 
became the center of French anti-Nazi leadership, and its 
constantly growing stature among Frenchmen inside and out- 
side France presented a serious problem to the American 
Government. In discussions of this problem Stimson, who 
had been a firm supporter of the President's Vichy policy and 
Eisenhower's Darlan decision, gradually found himself in the 
unexpected position, in some questions, of supporting De 
Gaulle against President Roosevelt and Secretary Hull. 

During the winter of 1943-1944, as plans proceeded for the 
Normandy invasion, it became necessary to determine Ameri- 
can policy toward liberated France, and it also became highly 
important to develop effective contact with the French resist- 
ance movement. The critical aspect of both of these questions 
was their relationship to De Gaulle's French Committee. To 
what degree should the Committee be recognized as the 
government of freed areas of France, and what part should it 
have in Allied dealings with the Resistance? To these ques- 
tions there could be no easy answer, but Stimson was disap- 
pointed by the degree of feeling which seemed to enter into 



546 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the thinking of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hull, both of whom 
had been sorely tried, over a long period, by the personal 
peculiarities of the Free French leader. 

Not that Stimson found De Gaulle personally charming. 
Since 1940 the General had consistently behaved with an 
arrogance and touchiness that were not pleasant to any of the 
Anglo-Americans. His abrupt seizure of St. Pierre and 
Miquelon in December, 1941, had been a typical example of 
his natural intransigence. In North Africa his behavior had 
been consistently annoying, and it was apparent that he had 
inextricably confused the cause of France with the cause of 
General de Gaulle as a latter-day Joan of Arc. To Secretary 
Hull, whose sensitive pride had been deeply aroused by un- 
justified and violent attacks on American policy toward Vichy, 
the very mention of De Gaulle was enough to produce an out- 
burst of skillful Tennessee denunciation, and to the President, 
De Gaulle was a narrow-minded French zealot with too much 
ambition for his own good and some rather dubious views on 
democracy. The validity of these opinions Stimson did not 
deny. 

A further factor in the President's mistrust of De Gaulle 
was Mr. Roosevelt's strong aversion, on principle, to any pre- 
judgment by the United States on the government to be estab- 
lished in liberated France. This, he insisted, was a problem 
for Frenchmen, and he did not propose to confer the advan- 
tages of American recognition on any group whose position 
was unconfirmed by the French people. And with this position 
too Stimson agreed. 

But admitting that De Gaulle was a difficult man to deal 
with, and admitting that the French Committee must not be 
recognized as the government of France until after it had been 
clearly approved by the French people, Stimson was never- 
theless convinced of the military importance of effective 
working relations with De Gaulle and his supporters. In early 
January, 1944, Eisenhower emphasized to Stimson his view 
that closer dealings with the Committee would be a great 
contribution to the success of his forthcoming operations; 
Eisenhower was also hopeful that the Committee might be 
outgrowing some of its bad habits in dealing with Anglo- 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 547 

Americans. On January 14, 1944, Stimson and McCloy went 
to see Secretary Hull and reported Eisenhower's views. Stim- 
son there said that in his opinion the time had come for a 
change of heart toward De Gaulle. "I pointed out that for the 
past six weeks . . . ever since we received that telegram from 
the President when he was at Cairo [see p. 560], we were 
absolutely prevented from discussing with the Committee 
two important things first, to get in touch through them with 
the Resistance, that is, the underground organization in France 
from which we hope to be able to get assistance. We want to 
get into communication with them from the very moment of 
the attack so that we will find friends on the shore waiting for 
us, so to speak. Secondly, we will also need to have their 
assistance when we are setting up the first regular organiza- 
tions of government in the districts through which our Army 
will be operating and through which its lines of communica- 
tion will run. I pointed out that time was running very short." 
Hull was not unsympathetic to Stimson's position. He strongly 
opposed the broader proposal of McCloy that the Committee 
should receive general recognition as the de facto government 
of the whole of France as soon as part of France was liberated. 
On the narrower questions Hull agreed that Stimson and 
McCloy should take their ideas to the President. 

Mr. Roosevelt proved a tough customer. He deeply mis- 
trusted De Gaulle and the French Committee, and his first 
draft of a directive to Eisenhower severely limited the Supreme 
Commander's authority to deal with the French Committee. 
All that Stimson was able to do is indicated by the following 
diary note: "The President granted me an interview . . . and 
I ... put up to him my revised draft of his own draft of a 
directive to Eisenhower in respect to the French Committee. 
This was a ticklish matter which I, after much reflection, 
decided to handle lightly and personally. I told him I had 
committed the great sin of attempting to revise one of his 
papers; that I had tried not to change the aim of his paper 
but merely to put it in a form which I thought would go down 
more easily with the French Committee and also not to lay 
too much burden of detail on Eisenhower. He was very nice 
about it. He said his paper was only a draft and he had dictated 



54 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

it in a hurry. We went over my draft together, I pointing out 
the changes. He said he thought that was all right and that he 
would approve the paper though he wanted to look it over 
more carefully that evening. I told him that I had shown it 
to Stettinius [then Under Secretary of State] and that Stet- 
tinius had approved it, at which he expressed his approval." 
(Diary, March 3, 1944) 

Mr. Roosevelt finally approved this draft, which permitted 
Eisenhower some freedom in treating with De Gaulle and his 
followers on military matters. But it was not enough. In June, 
1944, there was a further demand on the President for more 
friendly treatment of De Gaulle. 

The situation in this 'later negotiation was remarkably com- 
plex. On the one hand, the British Cabinet, led by Foreign 
Secretary .Eden, were pressing for outright recognition of 
De Gaulle, to which both Secretary Hull and the President 
were sternly opposed. In the absence of agreement among his 
superiors, Eisenhower was seriously embarrassed in his choice 
of a policy. Meanwhile, De Gaulle, with his usual instinct for 
the wrong move, had 'outraged all and sundry by a denuncia- 
tion just after D-day of the Allied military currency. As the 
French Committee had previously acquiesced in the issuance 
of this currency, De Gaulle's attack seemed particularly irre- 
sponsible. "It's as bad as if he were trying to steal our ammu- 
nition on the battlefield or turn our guns against us." (Diary, 
June ir, 1944) 

This move did not improve the atmosphere in which Wash- 
ington now reconsidered the issue of recognition. Stimson 
himself was extremely angry and for several days discarded 
his former stand in favor of increased cordiality to De Gaulle. 
But on June 14 he found himself back in his old position: 
De Gaulle was bad, but not to deal with him was worse. The 
diary record of his work and thinking on that day provides 
a full summary of the situation as he saw it : 

"During the day I had been thinking carefully of the situa- 
tion and I came to the conclusion that the President and the 
State Department were dealing a good deal in unrealities. 
Their policy is based upon giving the French people an oppor- 
tunity to choose their owln government by democratic methods 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 549 

which in substance means by a free election. That is the for- 
mula devised by the State Department for solving the various 
problems that come up in the different countries which have 
been enslaved, after we succeed in freeing them. But it is a 
very different thing to announce a formula on the one side and 
to put it into effect on the other. Very few countries outside 
the English-speaking countries know by experience what a 
fair election is. ... I found this out some years ago in my 
experience in Tacna Arica and Nicaragua. . . . 

"America cannot supervise the elections of a great country 
like France. Consequently we must eventually leave the execu- 
tion of the State Department formula to the French themselves 
and I am deeply concerned lest in insisting upon this formula 
we get dragged into a situation where we ourselves will assume 
the responsibility in part or more for its execution according 
to Anglo-Saxon ideals. That would result in terrific dangers 
and would be likely to permanently alienate the friendship of 
France and the United States. Consequently I have been 
brought to the conclusion that all we can do is to insist upon 
a pledge of free elections from De Gaulle and his party, who 
apparently are the only available representatives of the French 
people at the present time, and that we should devote the rest 
of our time to winning the war instead of quarreling with 
De Gaulle's efforts to gradually inch himself forward into a 
position where he and his Committee will be the Provisional 
Government of France pending such an election. In other 
words, no matter what we do, if he tries to use his preferred 
position to win further rewards from the French people at the 
election, we really cannot stop it and it is better not to run the 
risk of bickerings now which will serve not only to divide us 
from De Gaulle but will divide us from the British who more 
and more are supporting De Gaulle. It is this latter situation, 
namely the cleft between us and the British, which most alarms 
me. We have been unable thus far to agree with them upon a 
directive to Eisenhower as to his conduct in setting up French 
authority in the operations of France which he is liberating. 
He is the General not of the United States but of the two allied 
governments, and he is in a dreadful position when those two 



550 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

governments differ and get deadlocked on such an important 
question. 

"This morning a telegram came through from Marshall, 
King, a-nd Arnold voicing in serious language Eisenhower's 
embarrassment and earnestly recommending that we and the 
British get together, but as yet nothing has been done to solve 
that deadlock. ... On his part De Gaulle is doing his best to 
exploit this division and to rouse up feeling against us, which 
has serious danger. He has even denounced the provisional 
currency which we are introducing for temporary use in 
France until she establishes a government with new currency. 
This is a dangerous blow at our advancing troops. . . . 

"Personally I have great distrust of De Gaulle and I think 
that the President's position is theoretically and logically cor- 
rect, but as I said in the beginning, it is not realistic. The 
present situation I have come to believe requires for its solution 
an immediate reconciliation between the British and American 
Governments even if we provisionally recognize De Gaulle. 

"Well, McCloy and I talked this over when I got back from 
my ride and he fully agrees with the position which I have 
just stated. In fact he has all along been anxious to recognize 
De Gaulle provisionally in order to bring to the aid of our war 
effort the uprisings of the Resistants with whom De Gaulle 
is in close touch. McCloy and I worked the thing out and I 
jotted down a memorandum for a talk with the President. 

"But first I called up Hull and sought to make him see the 
difficulties of the situation. I read him the telegram above 
mentioned. ... He didn't think it could be done unless the 
military forces did it. I pointed out to him that it was a 
political question into which the military forces could not be 
asked to enter, but I got nowhere. I had wanted to build up a 
foundation on which to approach the President with the 
consent of the State Department behind me. I failed. 

"At nine o'clock I got a telephone connection with the White 
House and talked with the President. He had already received 
the telegram from Marshall, King, and Arnold but gave it 
scant attention. He was adamant in his refusal to depart from 
his position taken in the directive, that is now waiting in Lon- 
don, and considered it would be a departure from moral 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 551 

standards to do so. I patiently went over the different steps 
above enumerated in a talk which lasted on the telephone for 
nearly an hour, but I made very little advance. I pointed out 
the impossibility of actually supervising French elections and 
he fully agreed. But he believes that De Gaulle will crumple 
and that the British supporters of De Gaulle will be con- 
founded by the progress of events. This is contrary to every- 
thing that I hear. I think De Gaulle is daily gaining strength 
as the invasion goes on and that is to be expected. He has 
become the symbol of deliverance to the French people. The 
President thinks that other parties will spring up as the libera- 
tion goes on and that De Gaulle will become a very little 
figure. He said that he already knew of some such parties. . . . 

"Our conversation, while it was clear and the issue plainly 
stated on both sides, was perfectly friendly and . . . the Presi- 
dent not only took no offense at my persistence but apparently 
wished himself to argue the matter out because he kept the 
conversation going even when I gave him several opportunities 
to stop." 

This was almost Stimson's last effort on the recognition of 
De Gaulle, for from this time forward events pressed Mr. 
Roosevelt more effectively than his Secretary of War was 
able to do. De Gaulle himself calmed down considerably in 
the following weeks and carried through a visit to the United 
States without any particular outrages. During this visit his 
government was accorded "limited recognition." Still it was 
not until late August that Eisenhower finally received au- 
thority from the British and American Governments to deal 
with De Gaulle as the de facto authority in France, and not 
until October that the United States finally gave full diplo- 
matic recognition to De Gaulle's French Provisional Govern- 
ment. Both of these moves were so grudging and late that 
relations between France and the United States were clouded 
for many months thereafter. What might have been a truly 
warm and emotionally strong relationship in the Lafayette 
tradition was on both sides marked by coolness. 

It was hardly fair, in Stimson's view, to lay the major respon- 
sibility for this coolness on anyone but De Gaulle himself. A 
man of greater flexibility and judgment would surely have 



552 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

avoided the constant series of gratuitous obstructions and 
unilateral actions with which the general plagued American 
leaders, civil and military. On the other hand,- Stimson could 
not believe that it was wise for the State Department to have 
so long a memory for such annoyances. Perhaps this was a 
counsel of perfection, but the disadvantage of Mr. Hull's 
and Mr. Roosevelt's feeling about De Gaulle was that 
it blinded them to the generally evident fact that De 
Gaulle had made himself the leader of all France. This was 
a miscalculation which cooler statesmanship might have 
avoided, and its result was that the American Government 
never had the advantages of a genuinely close relationship 
with the France of the liberation, although individual officers 
and diplomats on both sides did much to bring the two 
countries together in practical dealings. 

The Vichy government, the Darlan episode, and dealings 
with De Gaulle were none of them hopeful signs to Stimson 
for the renaissance of France which he had anticipated as the 
first by-product of the great invasion. He had shared the 
aspirations of his old friend Herriot, who sent him by a neutral 
diplomat in 1942 his verbal assurance that the old France 
would rise again. But when a man he had trusted as he had 
Laval became "a mere Quisling," when Petain, who had been 
a fine soldier, permitted in senility outrageous crimes against 
Frenchmen by Frenchmen, when French North Africa would 
join the Allies only on the word of a Darlan, when fighting 
France could find no greater leader than a man of twisted 
pride and out-of-date political ideas then Stimson could say 
only that this was not the France that he had known. 

Reluctant to judge for who shall judge what peoples and 
their leaders do and feel under a defeat so shattering, and at 
such hands, as that of France in 1940? Stimson could only 
trust that from her ruined cities and her damaged pride France 
might in time rebuild in strength and honor her own freedom 
and her self-respect. For seventy years, since his childhood 
days in the gardens of the Tuileries, he had been trained to 
love and honor France, and in 1945 and afterwards he was still 
hopeful that a new France would be reconstructed. The great 
achievements of the French Resistance were the best guerdon 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 553 

of such hopes. Frenchmen and Americans in the year after D- 
day had fought together with a common purpose, and in this 
fact, not in past differences and still less in the envies of some 
Frenchmen or the ill-considered scorn of some Americans 
he saw the true basis of enduring postwar Franco-American 
relations. 

3. FDR AND MILITARY GOVERNMENT 

World War II demonstrated with unprecedented clarity the 
close interconnection between military and civilian affairs; 
nowhere was this connection more evident than in military 
government. Yet no task undertaken by the Army produced 
more misunderstanding at high levels of the Government. 

To the War Department and its Secretary the importance 
of adequate provision for government in the military theaters 
was obvious. It was a basic military principle, as General 
Marshall later wrote, that "Orderly civil administration must 
be maintained in support of military operations in liberated 
and occupied territories." It was obvious, furthermore, that 
such administration must at the beginning be under the control 
of the military commander, and even before Pearl Harbor the 
War Department began planning in anticipation of this sort of 
work. In May, 1942, the War Department established a school 
at Charlottesville, Virginia, for the training of military gov- 
ernment officers. All these steps Stimson approved, but it was 
not until August, 1942, that a difference of opinion in the 
administration on the matter of military government brought 
the subject forcibly to his attention. 

"Marshall and McCloy brought me news of a new tempest 
in a teapot raised by the jealous New Dealers around the 
throne, this time in respect to General Gullion. Gullion has 
started a school for the education of Army officers in their 
fiscal and economic duties in occupied territories, and this 
seems to have raised a storm among people who were anticipat- 
ing such activities as an opportunity for themselves. As a result 
they made the most ridiculous attacks on Gullion and he is 
very much troubled. Apparently they have been to the Presi- 
dent about it, so this brings the matter up to me. They accuse 
Gullion of being a Fascist and all other kinds of iniquity a 



554 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

typical New Deal attack from the New Deal cherubs around 
the throne." (Diary, August 27, 1942) 

Three months later this rumor of attack ripened into a sharp 
memorandum of inquiry from the President. Fortunately it 
proved easy to defend the Charlottesville school. Stimson was 
able to show the President that such preparation was absolutely 
essential, and Mr. Roosevelt was less easily frightened than 
the "cherubs." Stimson also found that he had a stanch ally 
in Secretary Hull, who agreed with his view that administra- 
tion in foreign lands must initially be an Army responsibility, 
while Stimson in turn fully accepted the State Department's 
responsibility for the formulation of political policy. On the 
basis of this agreement in principle the two Departments were 
able to co-ordinate their work without major clashes. 

But the trouble did not end there ; indeed, this was only the 
beginning. The invasion of North Africa brought into the 
open latent differences between the White House and the War 
Department which were not wholly settled for more than a 
year; during part of that time Stimson found himself in the 
difficult position of acting without the real support of his chief. 
Luckily the President in the end was wholly converted, but 
at the beginning there was a significant divergence in prin- 
ciple. 

The North African landings, in comparison with later 
Allied operations, were hastily improvised. Barely three 
months elapsed between the final decision to invade and the 
sailing of the invasion convoys. In this interval only sketchy 
preparation could be made for the handling of civil affairs 
after the landing, and no final decisions were reached as to 
organization and responsibility for such matters. As a result 
General Eisenhower was plagued in the early months of the 
operation by a series of problems that appeared to be of interest 
to nearly every Department of the American Government. 
As early as November 20, "The President opened up by a 
general scold of the Cabinet for trying to butt in and interfere 
with the civilian government of the occupied territories in 
North Africa. He said he addressed it to everybody except 
Frank Walker, the Postmaster . . . but I assume [perhaps 
rashly] that he did not mean either the Army or the Navy." 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 555 

The scolding was not wholly effective. Nor was it sufficient 
merely to prevent conflicting agencies from interference in 
North Africa; what General Eisenhower needed was full 
authority and sufficient staff assistance, and from Casablanca, 
in January, Marshall cabled to Stimson that Eisenhower was 
getting neither. On his return Marshall recommended that 
McCloy be sent to help Eisenhower organize his civil affairs 
staff. 

Stimson promptly recognized that the central difficulty in 
the situation was not in North Africa, and not in the War or 
State Department, nor even among the "cherubs. " The central 
difficulty was in Mr. Roosevelt's way of handling things, and 
in a telephone conversation with Mr. Roosevelt on February i 
Stimson's worst fears were promptly confirmed. "He was 
very friendly but, as I expected, takes a different and thor- 
oughly Rooseveltian view of what historic good administrative 
procedure has required in such a case as we have in North 
Africa. He wants to do it all himself. He says he did settle all 
the matters that were troubling Eisenhower when he was over 
there and that, if McCloy went over, there wouldn't be any- 
thing else to do; and as to Murphy he said that he was not 
there as a diplomat to report to Hull but as a special appointee 
of his own to handle special matters on which he reported to 
Roosevelt direct. This was a truly Rooseveltian position. I 
told him frankly over the telephone that it was bad administra- 
tion and asked him what a Cabinet was for and what Depart- 
ments were for except to have reports considered in that way, 
but I have small hopes of reforming him. The fault is Roose- 
veltian and deeply ingrained. Theodore Roosevelt had it to 
a certain extent but never anywhere nearly as much as this one. 
But I hammered out with him the proceedings that even in 
his opinion must be regarded as matters for the War Depart- 
ment. He admitted that in the handling of the railroads that 
were taken over and the lines of communication and the radios, 
such matters must be handled as military and as a part of the 
duties of the commanding general and be reported to the War 
Department. He says he wants to see me tomorrow or next 
day and at that [time] I shall have, a real talk with him. It 
was hard to do it over the telephone. I think he realizes that 



556 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

he has transgressed the line of proper procedure in some 
matters, and I shall make him read my letter to get the his- 
torical viewpoint. I told him frankly that, if the process of 
whittling down the powers of the Secretary of War should 
continue, I would be in a very embarrassing position for I 
had no desire, in the words of Churchill, to go down in history 
as the person who consented to the liquidation of the great 
historic powers of my office." 

The letter to which Stimson referred was one which he had 
prepared earlier the same day; it showed clearly how far his 
stand was from that of the President. To Mr. Roosevelt the 
whole concept of military government was both strange and 
somewhat abhorrent ; to Stimson it was a natural and inevitable 
result of military operations in any area where there was not 
already a fully effective friendly government. Mr. Roosevelt 
argued that operations in World War II should be patterned 
on those of Pershing, but to Stimson the true parallel was 
rather with American experience in the Philippines, in Cuba, 
and in Puerto Rico, for there would be no full-fledged central 
government in France or any of the other countries in which 
the American Army was going to have to fight. To Stimson 
the lessons of history were clear, and the tradition of military 
government was an honorable one. So in this letter, after 
rehearsing the facts of past experience and they were facts 
which he knew at firsthand, facts which revolved around 
names like Elihu Root, Leonard Wood, and Frank R. McCoy 
he summarized his conclusions in a form which showed 
why he felt strongly in the matter. This whole field of activity 
to him was one of the great and proper functions of an Ameri- 
can Secretary of War. 

"From the foregoing the following facts stand out as the 
historical policy of the United States Government in cases of 
military invasion and government: 

"i. The authority of the military governor in each case has 
stemmed out from the military power of the United States 
exercised by the President as Commander in Chief. 

"2. In each case the military governor has been compelled 
to employ agents for the solution of civil administrative prob- 
lems of government. In each case these agents have been in the 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 557 

first instance composed of Army officers although many of 
them have been men of high civilian experience; for example, 
Tasker Bliss who conducted the customs of Cuba with con- 
summate skill and success; Gorgas and Walter Reed who 
constructed its sanitary system; and many others like them. 

"3. These Army officers continued until they were replaced 
by competent local native administrators. 

"4. The administrations thus set up have been so successful 
as to constitute a bright page of American history, free from 
scandal and, in such difficult communities as Cuba and the 
Philippines, have laid the foundation of permanent good rela- 
tions between those countries and the United States. 

"5. In each case the President has used the Secretary of 
War as the departmental officer who carried out this exercise 
of the President's military power; who organized the plans 
and systems under which the various governors general acted ; 
and whose Department served as the medium of record and 
communication between the military governments and the 
President. 

"This necessarily followed from the fact that the War 
Department from its connection with the military occupation 
and its possession of a highly trained staff of military officers 
was the normal, natural, and in fact only Department of the 
government capable of rendering this service. I believe this 
condition still exists today. 

"6. There is ample opportunity in North Africa as there 
was in the second intervention of Cuba for the exercise of the 
functions of the American Department of State. But these 
functions are not administrative. . . ." 

The theory set forth in this letter was one which was very 
dear to Stimson, but as he considered the nature of his problem 
in the White House, he decided that no such blunt approach 
would serve. Mr. Roosevelt was not going to be persuaded by 
a lot of Republican history, nor were arguments about admin- 
istrative procedure likely to hold his attention. So on February 
3, Stimson took a different line. Arming himself with ex- 
amples of the existing confusion, he set out simply to get his 
camel's head McCloy into the President's tent of personal 



558 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

government. The contrast between the undelivered letter and 
the actual conversation is striking : 

"The President was in fine form and I had one of the best 
and most friendly talks with him I have ever had. He was 
full of his trip, naturally, and interspersed our whole talk 
with stories and anecdotes. But I had carefully prepared what 
I wanted to say and held him pretty well to the line. I had 
abandoned entirely the idea of bringing up the formal legal 
argument which I had made in the letter written last Monday, 
having come to the conclusion that the main thing was to get 
McCloy over there on a friendly basis and then work out 
from that And so my object was just to show the President, 
in answer to his inquiries over the telephone Monday night, 
that there was a real problem of disorder there in which 
McCloy could be of help and in which we ought to support 
Eisenhower. In this I was perfectly successful. He cordially 
accepted the idea; asked to have an appointment made with 
McCloy for him to see him personally and this was done as 
I came out. 

"But it was amusing, though to some degree discouraging, 
to see how he clung to the idea of doing all this sort of work 
himself. In the first place he thought he had practically wiped 
up the situation by his visit there and there was not much 
left to be done in the way of organization. But in this I pulled 
him down by the facts that I had gathered, showing that poor 
Eisenhower's first attempts to do the work with his 'Civil 
Affairs Section' of his General Staff, which is the usual annex 
of Army commanders for such work, were not successful; 
then how he had created as a part of his Staff the North 
African Economic Board as a more efficient engine for it, 
but that this was still incomplete; and then I swamped the 
President by showing him that none of these activities had 
been reported through any regular channels to me ; the great 
difficulty I had had in finding even what had been done, the 
delays which necessarily occurred and the importance there- 
fore of having a routine for this business. I showed him how 
neither Marshall nor I nor anybody in the Department had 
known of the vital papers which he, the President, had signed 
while on his conference there until I had dug them up this 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 559 

morning, getting one of them from the French mission that 
was here in Washington, and had a French copy of what they 
claimed was a contract the President himself had signed. 
This quite put him at my mercy. I gave him a translation 
which they had made for me in the Pentagon Building and 
he went off into an amusing story of how he had signed at 
least a part of the covenants in the paper and he could not 
deny the rest. The paper covered such important matters as 
the change in the ratio of exchange between the Morocco 
franc and the dollar which Roosevelt had made. He recol- 
lected this all right and told me a good story about it. I 
retaliated by telling him I knew all about this one because 
Hull had told me it was an agreement 'signed over a drink' 
by the President, at which he laughed and virtually admitted 
that the other covenants in the paper might have been accom- 
plished the same way." 

The permission given for McCloy's trip was a long step 
ahead. McCloy had already become Stimson's principal agent 
for all problems of civil affairs and all questions that affected 
the State Department; it was he who carried the main burden 
of work in these matters from this point forward. Mr. Roose- 
velt continued to believe that the administrative direction 
should be a function of the State Department and so ordered 
in early February. But Stimson was certain that experience 
would justify him, and carefully maintaining mutual under- 
standing with Mr. Hull, he established in the War Depart- 
ment a Civil Affairs Division which soon became the province 
of Major General John Hilldring. In May, McCloy became 
Chairman of a Combined Civil Affairs Committee operating 
under the Combined Chiefs of Staff. This committee later 
extended its work to include such vital politico-military prob- 
lems as terms of surrender, and it served as an invaluable 
bridge between military and political leaders. From this time 
onward the significance of and necessity for co-ordinated mili- 
tary government was not seriously questioned. Events once 
more taught the President what Stimson had tried to teach 
him by advocacy. Before the invasion of Sicily Mr. Roosevelt 
made one more effort to insure the dominance of civilian 
agencies in civil administration, but the experience gained in 



560 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

this operation and in the early stages of the Italian campaign 
appears to have convinced him that for good or ill the armed 
forces must have the administrative responsibility in all mili- 
tary theaters. Two actions in November, 1943, showed Stimson 
how far the President had moved. First, on November 10 
he wrote a letter to Stimson declaring that the War Depart- 
ment must assume the responsibility for civilian relief in all 
liberated areas during the first six months after their libera- 
tion. Second, from Cairo he cabled to Stimson his view that 
all arrangements for civil administration and dealings with 
the French people and their leaders must initially be purely 
military; his main purpose in this second order was to mini- 
mize political contact with De Gaulle and so avoid any 
implied recognition of the Frenchman's status, but the cable 
was also proof that he had finally recognized the value and 
the inevitability of military government. That Mr. Roosevelt 
continued to be cautious in permitting the military to deal 
with the French (see p. 546) was to Stimson a minor matter 
compared with his conversion to sound principles of adminis- 
tration. 2 During the remainder of the war the Army was 
given a constantly increasing measure of the President's 
confidence in its work in civil affairs, and under McCloy and 
Hilldring the War Department organization became more 
and more effective in co-ordinating and administering a re- 
sponsibility that in its eventual size and scope far exceeded 
anything that Stimson himself had anticipated. So clearly 
did the Army prove itself to be the proper agency for such 
work that more than two years after the end of the war, long 
after the military importance of the overseas theaters had 
been superseded by the dominance of economic and political 
problems, the War Department was still carrying on the 
administration of the American occupation in defeated coun- 
tries. And this too Stimson held to be a proper assignment, 
notwithstanding the argument that the State Department 

2 The experience of Franklin Roosevelt in dealing with military government re- 
minded Stimson very strongly of a similar lesson learned forty years earlier by his 
cousin Theodore. It was T.R. who tried civilian engineers in Panama before he turned 
to the Army and selected Goethals, remarking, as Stimson heard the story, that "the 
great thing about an Army officer is that he does what you tell him to do." Discipline 
without brains was of little value, but both Roosevelts learned to their cost the use- 
lessness in administration of brains without discipline. 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 561 

should handle such matters. From his experience in both 
Departments he was wholly convinced that the State Depart- 
ment by its nature was unequipped for major administrative 
chores, while administration was the War Department's nor- 
mal, constant business. The State Department must frame the 
policies, but it could not hope to equal the Army in the task 
of carrying them out. 

4. A WORD FROM HINDSIGHT 

After the war, considering such problems as those just 
discussed Stimson was reinforced in his wartime belief that 
Mr. Roosevelt's personal virtuosity in high politics carried 
with it certain disadvantages which might have been limited 
if the President had been willing to provide himself with a 
War Cabinet for the co-ordinated execution of his policies a 
body which might have done in war diplomacy what the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff did in military strategy. 

Problems like those of China and France were not merely 
diplomatic the State Department could not and would not 
assume the whole labor of determining policy in areas where 
the military interest was so significant. Yet the military interest 
could not of itself be wholly determinant; it was not proper 
that such questions should be decided by the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, as the members of that body well understood. 

Mr. Roosevelt therefore could not rely on his regularly 
constituted advisers military or diplomatic for final rec- 
ommendation and co-ordinated execution in problems of war 
diplomacy. Nor were his regular Cabinet meetings a suit- 
able place for such discussion and decision; there were nearly 
twenty men in Cabinet meetings, and during the war they 
became a formality; to Stimson they were useful principally 
as a way of getting into the White House to have a word with 
the President in private after the meetings were over; a 
typical diary entry describes a Cabinet meeting toward the 
end of the war as "the same old two-and-sixpence, no earthly 
good." Mr. Roosevelt's own view of Cabinet meetings was 
not wholly different: "The Cabinet meeting this afternoon 
was brief. The President opened it by saying humorously 



562 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

that he had just told his family that he wanted a short Cabinet 
meeting and they had said, Well, you know how you can 
get it. You can just stop your own talking.' There was a smile 
around the table because of the truth of the statement. The 
Roosevelt Cabinets are really a solo performance by the Presi- 
dent interspersed with some questions and very few debates. 
When the President told this story, Hull broke in in his dry 
way. 'Yes,' he said, 'I found that when I was asked by the 
President to come over to lunch for a conference, I used to 
have to get a little bite to eat first myself so that I could talk 
while he was eating.' This met with great applause." (Diary, 
May i, 1942) 

The proper solution, Stimson believed, would have been for 
Mr. Roosevelt to provide himself with a War Cabinet like 
that upon which Winston Churchill relied in Great Britain. 
Cabinet responsibility of course is not the same in the United 
States as in Great Britain, but Stimson felt that Mr. Roosevelt 
would have found it helpful to have some such body for the 
handling of his war policies in foreign lands. Such a body 
would have included his most trusted personal adviser, Harry 
Hopkins, and perhaps the Secretaries of State, Treasury, War, 
and Navy. Organized like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with a 
secretariat of top quality and a continuing record of the policy 
decisions made or approved by the President, such a body 
might have avoided some at least of the difficulties discussed 
above, and others not unlike them in other areas. Stimson 
would never have desired that the President's personal initia- 
tive and extraordinary talent should be limited by red tape, 
but he felt sure that such a body would have been a reinforce- 
ment to Mr. Roosevelt's less evident abilities as a co-ordinator 
and executive. Unfortunately the whole idea was foreign to 
the President's nature; only reluctantly had he accepted the 
notion of such an organization even in the purely military 
field, and he never showed the least disposition to alter his 
methods in diplomacy. Stimson himself never recommended 
a War Cabinet to Mr. Roosevelt; he had no desire to appear 
to push himself forward. But others made such a recommen- 
dation, and the President was not impressed. 

To be useful, such a body would have had to be the Presi- 



THE ARMY AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE 563 

dent's own creation. No attempt to co-ordinate action on any 
lower level could have much value so long as the central 
threads of policy were personally managed in the White 
House. Back in 1940, in an effort to fill a gap which he felt at 
once on his arrival in Washington and which he had noticed 
from the other side of the fence when he was Secretary of 
State Stimson had been the leading spirit in setting up 
regular weekly meetings of Hull, Knox, and himself. These 
meetings were wholly unofficial and personal. They served 
a useful purpose in keeping the three Secretaries informed of 
one another's major problems. But they had no connection 
with Mr. Roosevelt's final determinations of policy, and in 
1942 and 1943 they became less and less valuable. Reorganized 
late in 1944, with McCloy as recorder and with formal 
agenda and conclusions, this Committee of Three became 
more useful; Stimson, Stettinius, and Forrestal were able to 
use it for the solution of some important points and they were 
able to establish at a lower level, for routine co-ordination, 
the extremely useful State, War and Navy Co-ordinating 
Committee. But the Committee of Three, in considering 
major problems, always remained more of a clearing-house 
than an executive committee. 

Another embryonic War Cabinet had existed before Pearl 
Harbor the War Council, which met at frequent intervals 
in the White House. This group included Hull, Stimson, and 
Knox in addition to the senior military officers. But when 
Mr. Roosevelt learned to like the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 
1942, he allowed himself to dispense with any general meet- 
ings on war policy. 

Stimson's belief in this notion of a War Cabinet was based 
partly on hindsight, and he knew that he might seem to be 
elevating his personal feelings into a theory of government. 
He hoped this was not the case. He had served in too many 
Cabinets to expect that all decisions would match his advice, 
and it was not his disagreements with the President on details 
of policy that bothered him, as he looked back in 1947; it was 
rather that Mr. Roosevelt's policy was so often either un- 
known or not clear to those who had to execute it, and worse 
yet, in some cases it seemed self-contradictory. In the case of 



564 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

China, for example, all those who worked so energetically at 
cross-purposes in Chungking undoubtedly regarded them- 
selves as possessors of a mandate from Washington and 
even from the White House. 

In summary, then, Stimson's experience of the diplomacy 
of coalition warfare in World War II left him with this 
conclusion: Franklin Roosevelt as a wartime international 
leader proved himself as good as one man could be but one 
man was not enough to keep track of so vast an undertaking. 



CHAPTER XXII 

The Beginnings of Peace 



I. A SHIFT IN EMPHASIS 

^ I ^HE main object of war is peace, and we have now to 
JL study Stimson's part in the framing of American policy 
for the establishment of a lasting peace after World War II. 
Not only as Secretary of War but as a man who had been 
forced to learn in 1931 and afterwards the consequences of 
bad peacemaking, he was deeply interested in the problems 
of the postwar settlement. 

But it should be remembered that peace was an objective 
which depended first of all on victory, and, by reason of his 
official position as well as his natural inclination, Stimson's 
work until the latter part of 1944 was almost wholly concerned 
with winning the war. In this respect his attitude was little 
different from that of the President and most of the adminis- 
tration. Even in diplomatic questions like those discussed in 
the last chapter, the major consideration was almost always 
the advancement of military victory. 

Some critics of American policy have judged it astonish- 
ingly naive in this single-minded concentration on victory. 
Stimson could not agree. The general objectives of American 
policy had been clearly and eloquently stated by Mr. Roose- 
velt first in the Atlantic Charter and later in his assertion of 
the Four Freedoms. It was further clear that American policy 
envisaged the development of the wartime United Nations 
into a peacetime organization of friendly nations. So long as 
wartime policy did not directly and violently contravene these 
general principles, it seemed to Stimson wholly proper that 
detailed action should be governed by the overriding require- 

565 



566 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ment of victory, in the confidence that as victory was the great 
common immediate objective, action which advanced victory 
must in general promote good international relations. 

It was only in the summer of 1944 that high officials out- 
side the State Department began to give their close attention 
to postwar problems. The extraordinary success of the great 
invasion lifted from men's minds all fears and doubts about 
the basic strategy of victory; at the same time it created a 
pressing need for attention to new problems. The Normandy 
landing and the great Avranches break-through precipitated 
a situation in which victory was certain and apparently close, 
and as General Eisenhower's forces advanced toward the Ger- 
man border it became clear that the armies had outrun the 
policy makers. From this unsettled situation there developed 
in September the most violent single interdepartmental 
struggle of Stimson's career the issue over the "Morgenthau 
plan" for the treatment of Germany. In order to set Stimson's 
part of this struggle in its proper focus, it will be useful to 
consider briefly his two most firmly held general views about 
the peace settlement. 

His first and great commandment was the maintenance of 
friendship with Great Britain. Of itself, such friendship 
would not be sufficient to keep the peace here Stimson 
differed somewhat from some who felt that an Anglo- 
American coalition could somehow assert its virtuous will 
throughout the world. But without the maintenance of close 
relationships with the British Stimson did not see how America 
could hope to be an effective member of world society. 
Division from the British would neutralize in mutual op- 
position two nations whose fundamental principles and pur- 
poses were so much alike that their opposition could only 
work to the disadvantage of both. Friendship with Great 
Britain had been cardinal in Stimson's policy as Secretary 
of State; in 1939 and 1940 his advocacy of "intervention" had 
been based on his belief in the fundamental unity of Anglo- 
American interests ; it was a belief which he saw no reason to 
discard. Several times during the war he expressed forcibly 
to various groups of administration leaders "the conviction 
I am getting more strongly every day that our plan must be 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 567 

a plan to continue after the war the same controls as have 
saved us during the war, namely close association between the 
English-speaking countries." (Diary, May 11, 1943) This 
was a view which he found general among his colleagues; 
indeed much of his later disagreement with Mr. Roosevelt 
over the Morgenthau plan rose out of a misplaced Presiden- 
tial eagerness to help the British. 

Stimson's second great principle was that the essential basis 
of enduring peace must be economic, and here again his 
opinion was based on his own experience. The sermon 
preached by Keynes after Versailles had acquired deep and 
poignant meaning for Stimson when as Secretary of State he 
had wrestled with the results of that economically impossible 
treaty. Now he hoped for a settlement which would involve 
no burden of debts, no barriers to the internal trade of Central 
Europe, no politically independent and economically help- 
less group of "successor states." Evidence that these objectives 
were being ignored deeply disturbed him when he learned 
of the pending three-power decision to restore an independent 
Austria his mind turned back to the financial collapse of 
Austria in 1931. "They haven't any grasp apparently of the 
underlying need of proper economic arrangements to make 
the peace stick. ... If they restored Austria to her position in 
which she was left by the Versailles arrangement twenty-five 
years ago, why they would reduce her again to a non-self- 
sustaining state and they don't seem to have that thing in mind 
at all. Central Europe after the war has got to eat. She has 
got to be free from tariffs in order to eat." (Diary, October 

28, 1943) 

Although most of his time at meetings with Mr. Roosevelt 
in this period was devoted to more immediate questions like 
the OVERLORD command, he had a chance on December 18, 
1943, to express his position briefly. "I got an occasion to 
tell him that I had seen proposals in regard to the division of 
Europe in case of victory and that I had only one general 
recommendation at present and that was not to divide Europe 
up into separate pieces which could not each of them feed 
itself on its own land." He went on to point out that in the 
case of Germany this policy must involve the retention of 



568 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

much German commerce and industry, for "unless this com- 
merce was protected she could not probably feed her popula- 
tion by agriculture." 

Until late in 1944 Stimson's thinking on the peace did 
not develop much beyond the two principles outlined above. 
While he of course accepted the general notion of an inter- 
national organization to replace and if possible improve on 
the League of Nations, he did not regard any such organiza- 
tion as a proper point of focus for the peacemaking; he 
entirely agreed with the President that the problem of the 
peace settlement was necessarily one to be solved by the major 
victorious powers, a position explicitly stated by three of them 
in the Moscow Declaration of November, 1943. The question 
of future relations with Soviet Russia was one about which 
until early 1945 he was cautiously optimistic. 

2. THE MORGENTHAU PLAN 

It was with this general attitude that Stimson returned 
from Normandy in July, 1944, to find the administration 
belatedly but vigorously engaged in the construction of a 
policy for the treatment of Germany. At the same time, in 
anticipation of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, the outlines 
of a postwar organization were being sketched in the State 
Department. It was a very different atmosphere from the one 
he had left a month before, and he at once recognized that he 
must shift his attention. In his own Department, officers 
responsible for civil affairs reported that they were face to 
face with a situation the forthcoming occupation of Ger- 
many for which they had no orders ; it was not even settled 
which part of Germany United States forces should occupy. 
On July 31, after hearing from Harry Hopkins about "the 
postwar problems," Stimson remarked, "I myself am think- 
ing along those lines now, and ... as a result of all these 
thoughts, I had Jack McCloy and Ed Stettinius in to dinner 
and we talked over the pending negotiations. . . . The most 
pressing thing is to get the President to decide on which part 
of Germany will be occupied by the American troops. He is 
hell-bent to occupy the northern portion. We all think that 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 569 

that is a mistake that it will only get us into a head-on 
collision with the British. " (Diary, July 31, 1944) 

During the first weeks of August Stimson was on vacation 
in New York, leaving McCloy to act for him in these matters. 
Returning to Washington he found that no progress had been 
made. On August 25 he lunched with the President, and gave 
him five good reasons for a decision to occupy southwestern 
Germany; "I was inclined to think that I had made an im- 
pression on him but of course it was impossible to say." Then, 
after some discussion of the general nature of the German 
problem, "I made my main point that we were running into 
a lack of preparedness. Our troops were going into Germany 
and they had no instruction on these vital points. ... I pointed 
out that the President himself couldn't do the necessary study 
to decide these various points and suggested that he ought to 
appoint a Cabinet Committee who could assimilate the work 
that was already being done by men on a lower level and 
prepare it for the President himself. He took that point and 
accepted it and then we went into Cabinet and at the very 
beginning of Cabinet he ... said that he would appoint 
Secretaries Hull, Morgenthau, and myself as the members 
of that committee, with the Secretary of the Navy acting on 
it whenever a Navy matter was involved." To this list Mr. 
Roosevelt later added Harry Hopkins. 

The first meeting of the Cabinet Committee was called on 
September 5. In the meantime Stimson found that there was 
a strong divergence of view in Washington, between those 
who were in favor of a firm but discriminating treatment of 
Germany, looking toward her eventual reconstruction as a 
prosperous and peaceful nation, and those who frankly desired 
a Carthaginian peace. The night before the committee meet- 
ing Stimson and McCloy dined with Morgenthau and his 
assistant, Harry White. "We had a pleasant dinner but we 
were all aware of the feeling that a sharp issue is sure to arise 
over the question of the treatment of Germany. Morgenthau 
is, not unnaturally, very bitter and ... it became very apparent 
that he would plunge out for a treatment of Germany which 
I feel sure would be unwise." (Diary, September 4, 1944) 

The Cabinet Committee meeting confirmed Stimson's worst 



570 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

fears. "Hull brought up a draft of agenda for the meeting. . . . 
This paper was all right on its face down to the last section 
which contained some extreme propositions and principles, 
and as soon as we got into a discussion of these I, to my 
tremendous surprise, found that Hull was as bitter as Mor- 
genthau against the Germans and was ready to jump all the 
principles that he had been laboring for in regard to trade 
for the past twelve years. 1 He and Morgenthau wished to 
wreck completely the immense Ruhr-Saar area of Germany 
and turn it into second-rate agricultural land regardless of all 
that that area meant not only to Germany but to the welfare 
of the entire European continent. Hopkins went with them 
so far as to wish to prevent the manufacture of steel in the 
area, a prohibition which would pretty well sabotage every- 
thing else. I found myself a minority of one and I labored 
vigorously but entirely ineffectively against my colleagues. In 
all the four years that I have been here I have not had such a 
difficult and unpleasant meeting although of course there 
were no personalities. We all knew each other too well for 
that. But we were irreconcilably divided. In the end it was 
decided that Hull would send in his memorandum to the 
President while we should each of us send a memorandum 
of views in respect to it." (Diary, September 5, 1944) 

It is worth noting the general nature of the parts of Hull's 
paper on which the Cabinet Committee was unanimous. 
These paragraphs provided for the complete demilitarization 
of Germany, the dissolution of the Nazi party and all affiliated 
organizations, with energetic punishment of war criminals, the 
institution of extensive controls over communications and edu- 
cation, and the acceptance of the principle of reparations to 
other states, though not to the United States. It was only on 
the issue of the destruction of German industry that Stimson 
was violently opposed to his colleagues. 

His basic position on this issue was stated in the memoran- 
dum sent later the same day to his three colleagues, and 
forwarded by Hull to the President. This memorandum must 
be quoted nearly in full : 

1 This later seemed to Stimson an overstatement of Hull's position; in any event 
the Secretary of State goon took a quite different view. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 571 

"I have considered the [State Department] paper entitled 
'Suggested Recommendations on Treatment of Germany from 
the Cabinet Committee for the President.' . . . 

"With the exception of the last paragraph I find myself in 
agreement with the principles stated therein and they are in 
conformity with the lines upon which we have been proceed- 
ing in the War Department in our directives to the Armed 
Forces. 

"The last paragraph, however, is as follows: 

" h. The primary objectives of our economic policy are 
( i ) the standard of living of the German population shall be 
held down to subsistence levels; (2) German economic posi- 
tion of power in Europe must be eliminated; (3) German 
economic capacity must be converted in such manner that 
it will be so dependent upon imports and exports that Ger- 
many cannot by its own devices reconvert to war production.' 

"While certain of these statements by themselves may pos- 
sibly be susceptible of a construction with which I would 
not be at variance, the construction put upon them at the 
discussion this morning certainly reached positions to which 
I am utterly opposed. The position frankly taken by some 
of my colleagues was that the great industrial regions of 
Germany known as the Saar and the Ruhr with their very 
important deposits of coal and ore should be totally trans- 
formed into a nonindustrialized area of agricultural land. 

"I cannot conceive of such a proposition being either pos- 
sible or effective and I can see enormous general evils coming 
from an attempt to so treat it. During the past eighty years 
of European history this portion of Germany was one of the 
most important sources of the raw materials upon which the 
industrial and economic livelihood of Europe was based. 
Upon the production which came from the raw materials of 
this region during those years, the commerce of Europe was 
very largely predicated. Upon that production Germany be- 
came the largest source of supply to no less than ten European 
countries, viz: Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, 
Switzerland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria; 
and the second largest source of supply to Great Britain, Bel- 
gium, and France. By the same commerce, which in large 



572 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

part arose from this production, Germany also became the 
best buyer or customer of Russia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, 
Switzerland, Italy, and Austria-Hungary; and the second best 
customer of Great Britain, Sweden, and Denmark. The pro- 
duction of these materials from this region could not be sealed 
up and obliterated, as was proposed this morning, without 
manifestly causing a great dislocation to the trade upon which 
Europe has lived. In Germany itself this commerce has built 
up since 1870 a population of approximately thirty million 
more people than were ever supported upon the agricultural 
soil of Germany alone. Undoubtedly a similar growth of 
population took place in the nations which indirectly partici- 
pated in the commerce based upon this production. 

"I cannot treat as realistic the suggestion that such an area 
in the present economic condition of the world can be turned 
into a nonproductive 'ghost territory' when it has become the 
center of one of the most industrialized continents in the 
world, populated by peoples of energy, vigor, and progressive- 
ness. 

"I can conceive of endeavoring to meet the misuse which 
Germany has recently made of this production by wise sys- 
tems of control or trusteeship or even transfers of ownership 
to other nations. But I cannot conceive of turning such a gift 
of nature into a dust heap. 

"War is destruction. This war more than any previous war 
has caused gigantic destruction. The need for the recuperative 
benefits of productivity is more evident now than ever before 
throughout the world. Not to speak of Germany at all or even 
her satellites, our allies in Europe will feel the need of the 
benefit of such productivity if it should be destroyed. More- 
over, speed of reconstruction is of great importance, if we 
hope to avoid dangerous convulsions in Europe. 

"We contemplate the transfer from Germany of ownership 
of East Prussia, Upper Silesia, Alsace and Lorraine (each of 
them except the first containing raw materials of importance) 
together with the imposition of general economic controls. 
We also are considering the wisdom of a possible partition of 
Germany into north and south sections, as well as the creation 
of an internationalized state in the Ruhr. With such pre- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 573 

cautions, or indeed with only some of them, it certainly should 
not be necessary for us to obliterate all industrial productivity 
in the Ruhr area, in order to preclude its future misuse. 

"Nor can I agree that it should be one of our purposes to 
hold the German population 'to a subsistence level' if this 
means the edge of poverty. This would mean condemning the 
German people to a condition of servitude in which, no mat- 
ter how hard or how effectively a man worked, he could not 
materially increase his economic condition in the world. Such 
a program would, I believe, create tension and resentments 
far outweighing any immediate advantage of security and 
would tend to obscure the guilt of the Nazis and the vicious- 
ness of their doctrines and their acts. 

"By such economic mistakes I cannot but feel that you 
would also be poisoning the springs out of which we hope 
that the future peace of the world can be maintained. . . . 

"My basic objection to the proposed methods of treating 
Germany which were discussed this morning was that in 
addition to a system of preventive and educative punishment 
they would add the dangerous weapon of complete economic 
oppression. Such methods, in my opinion, do not prevent war; 
they tend to breed war." 

On September 6 the President held a meeting with the 
Cabinet Committee. Stimson and Morgenthau submitted their 
new memoranda. The President addressed most of his com- 
ments to Stimson, "reverting to his proposition . . . that 
Germany could live happily and peacefully on soup from 
soup kitchens," but he appeared not to accept Morgenthau's 
view that the Ruhr should be dismantled, arguing rather 
"that Great Britain was going to be in sore straits after the 
war and . . . that the products of the Ruhr might be used to 
furnish raw material for British steel industry. I said that I 
had no objection certainly to assisting Britain in every way 
that we could but that this was very different from obliterat- 
ing the Ruhr. . . . There was quite an easing up in the attitude 
of Hull, and the President certainly was not following Mor- 
genthau. ... I wound up by using the analogy of Charles 
Lamb's dissertation on roast pig. I begged the President to 
remember that this was a most complicated economic question 



574 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and all that I was urging upon him was that he should not 
burn down his house of the world for the purpose of getting 
a meal of roast pig. He apparently caught the point." (Diary, 
September 6, 1944) 

Stimson came away with the feeling that he had made some 
progress. Secretary Morgenthau apparently shared this feel- 
ing, for he promptly requested a rehearing before the Presi- 
dent. A new meeting was set for September 9. Meanwhile both 
Morgenthau and Stimson prepared new papers expanding 
their views. The new Morgenthau paper, submitted on Sep- 
tember 9, asserted that it was a fallacy that Europe needed 
a strong industrial Germany, that the mines and mills of the 
Ruhr had indeed been a depressing competitor of Great 
Britain particularly, and "it contained a specious appeal to 
the President's expressed desire to help England by ... the 
proposal that by sealing up the Ruhr we would give England 
the chance to jump into Germany's business of supplying 
Europe industrially and thus curing the alleged English de- 
pression in coal mining. It asserted that England had coal 
enough to supply its present output for five hundred years! 
This certainly is contrary to everything I have heard about 
the mines of Great Britain which have been constantly as- 
serted to have been dug so deep as to become almost un- 
economic." (Diary, September 9, 1944) 

In Stimson's memorandum of the same date he summarized 
again the basic difference between his position and Morgen- 
thau's. The latter had expressed in writing (in his paper of 
September 6) the proposals made orally before the Cabinet 
Committee. Speaking of the Ruhr "and surrounding indus- 
trial areas" to a total of over 30,000 square miles, Morgenthau 
had written: "This area should not only be stripped of all 
presently existing industries but so weakened and controlled 
that it cannot in the foreseeable future become an industrial 
area. . . . All industrial plants and equipment not destroyed 
by military action shall either be completely dismantled or 
removed from the area or completely destroyed, all equip- 
ment shall be removed from the mines and the mines shall 
be thoroughly wrecked." Stimson reiterated his unalterable 
opposition to any such program. It would breed war, not 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 575 

peace; it would arouse sympathy for Germany all over the 
world ; it would destroy resources desperately needed for the 
reconstruction of Europe. Asking that no hasty decisions be 
made, he urged the President to accept for the time being 
a slightly revised version of Secretary Hull's original memo- 
randum, leaving the controversial economic issue for future 
discussion. 

Without making any decision on any of these papers, Mr. 
Roosevelt went to Quebec, where on September n the Octa- 
gon Conference with Mr. Churchill began. One of the prin- 
cipal issues on the agenda for this meeting was the German 
problem, and Stimson was not happy about the President's 
state of body and mind. "I have been much troubled by the 
President's physical condition. He was distinctly not himself 
Saturday [September 9]. He had a cold and seemed tired 
out. I rather fear for the effects of this hard conference upon 
him. I am particularly troubled . . . that he is going up there 
without any real preparation for the solution of the under- 
lying and fundamental problem of how to treat Germany. So 
far as he had evidenced it in his talks with us, he has had 
absolutely no study or training in the very difficult problem 
which we have to decide, namely of how far we can introduce 
preventive measures to protect the world from Germany 
running amuck again and how far we must refrain from 
measures which will simply provoke the wrong reaction. I 
hope the British have brought better trained men with them 
than we are likely to have to meet them." (Diary, September 
ii, 1944) 

The President seemed to Stimson to be further hampered 
by his obsession with the notion of a coming revolution in 
France. "I have argued the question with him already several 
times. He has been warned by Leahy that he may expect a 
revolution in France. . . . Although [Leahy] has had the 
advantage of being stationed in Vichy for several years, I 
don't think his advice is good. I think it is very doubtful 
whether there will be a revolution. But as I have pointed 
out to the President, the revolution can hardly possibly occur 
until Germany is conquered. Pending that time the danger of 
a common enemy, Germany, will keep the French factions 



576 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

together. Therefore by the time such a revolution can come, 
in all likelihood our forces will be in Germany and will have 
lines of communication not running across France. Therefore 
there is no reason why we should accept any call to occupy 
France. In fact it seems entirely farfetched that any of the 
Allies should occupy France. She has had many revolutions 
before now which she has been left to settle herself and that 
ought to be done now. But the President has worked himself 
up into an apprehension of this. ... At that meeting on Satur- 
day morning whenever any question came up as to our duties 
in Germany, he would say: 'I want somebody to be sure and 
keep a buttress between us and France'." (Diary, September 
n, 1944) 

His preoccupation with France seemed to be preventing 
the President, not only from making a decision on the zone 
of occupation, but even from any balanced consideration of 
the German problem as a whole. And although he finally 
accepted the southwestern zone at Quebec, he did not so 
quickly master the German question as a whole. As the 
Quebec Conference proceeded Stimson began to hear disturb- 
ing reports. On the thirteenth he learned that Morgenthau 
had been called to the conference; on the sixteenth he heard 
that the President and the Prime Minister had accepted the 
Morgenthau plan. But it was not until the twentieth, when 
Morgenthau had returned victorious to Washington, that he 
learned the whole story. 

It appeared that the President had called Morgenthau to 
Quebec, where he had argued the case for his plan, that Mor- 
genthau had found the British at first entirely opposed to him, 
that Mr. Churchill had been converted by the argument that 
the elimination of the Ruhr would create new markets for 
Great Britain, and that finally the President and the Prime 
Minister had initialed the following agreement: 

"At a conference between the President and the Prime 
Minister upon the best measures to prevent renewed rearm- 
ament by Germany, it was felt that an essential feature was 
the future disposition of the Ruhr and the Saar. 

"The ease with which the metallurgical, chemical, and 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 577 

electric industries in Germany can be converted from peace 
to war has already been impressed upon us by bitter expe- 
rience. It must also be remembered that the Germans have 
devastated a large portion of the industries of Russia and of 
other neighboring Allies, and it is only in accordance with 
justice that these injured countries should be entitled to re- 
move the machinery they require in order to repair the losses 
they have suffered. The industries referred to in the Ruhr 
and in the Saar would therefore be necessarily put out of 
action and closed down. It was felt that the two districts 
should be put under some body under the world organization 
which would supervise the dismantling of these industries 
and make sure that they were not started up again by some 
subterfuge. 

"This programme for eliminating the war-making indus- 
tries in the Ruhr and in the Saar is looking forward to 
converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural 
and pastoral in its character. 

"The Prime Minister and the President were in agreement 
upon this programme. 

O.K. 

F.D.R. 
W.S.C. 

15 9. 
"September 16, 1944" 



Morgenthau told this story "modestly and without rubbing 
it in, but it was the narration of a pretty heavy defeat for 
everything that we had fought for." The extraordinary docu- 
ment initialed by the two leaders marked a remarkable shift 
from another document signed by the same two men three 
years before. As McCloy pointed out to Stimson, it was the 
Atlantic Charter which had pronounced that the United 
States and the United Kingdom would "endeavor, with due 
respect for their existing obligation, to further the enjoyment 
by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, 
on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the 
world which are needed for their economic prosperity." 



57 8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Fortunately for all concerned, the Quebec memorandum did 
not long remain official United States policy. 

When he first heard of the President's decision, Stimson 
was about to sign a third memorandum to Mr. Roosevelt 
on the Morgenthau plan. Although it seemed a waste of time 
to submit a further paper when the decision was already made, 
he decided to keep the record straight. "It will undoubtedly 
irritate him for he dislikes opposition when he has made up 
his mind. But I have thought the thing over and decided to 
do it. I should not keep my self-respect if I did not." (Diary, 
September 17, 1944) 

This third memorandum (drafted in large part by McCloy) 
pitched the argument on a higher level than anything that had 
before been written. The paper was designed to appeal from 
FDR., the hasty signer of ill-considered memoranda, to Frank- 
lin Roosevelt, the farsighted and greatly humanitarian Presi- 
dent of the United States. Its critical paragraphs follow: 

"The question is not whether we want Germans to suffer 
for their sins. Many of us would like to see them suffer the 
tortures they have inflicted on others. The only question is 
whether over the years a group of seventy million educated, 
efficient and imaginative people can be kept within bounds on 
such a low level of subsistence as the Treasury proposals 
contemplate. I do not believe that is humanly possible. A 
subordinate question is whether even if you could do this 
it is good for the rest of the world either economically or 
spiritually. Sound thinking teaches that . . . poverty in one 
part of the world usually induces poverty in other parts. 
Enforced poverty is even worse, for it destroys the spirit not 
only of the victim but debases the victor. It would be just 
such a crime as the Germans themselves hoped to perpetrate 
upon their victims it would be a crime against civilization 
itself. 

"This country since its very beginning has maintained the 
fundamental belief that all men, in the long run, have the 
right to be free human beings and to live in the pursuit of 
happiness. Under the Atlantic Charter victors and vanquished 
alike are entitled to freedom from economic want. But the 
proposed treatment of Germany would, if successful, delib- 
erately deprive many millions of people of the right to free- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 579 

dom from want and freedom from fear. Other peoples all 
over the world would suspect the validity of our spiritual 
tenets and question the long-range effectiveness of our eco- 
nomic and political principles as applied to the vanquished. 

"The proposals would mean a forcible revolution in all of 
the basic methods of life of a vast section of the population as 
well as a disruption of many accustomed geographical associa- 
tions and communications. Such an operation would naturally 
and necessarily involve a chaotic upheaval in the people's 
lives which would inevitably be productive of the deepest 
resentment and bitterness towards the authorities which had 
imposed such revolutionary changes upon them. Physically, 
considering the fact that their present enlarged population has 
been developed and supported under an entirely different 
geography and economy, it would doubtless cause tremendous 
suffering involving virtual starvation and death for many, and 
migrations and changes for others. It would be very difficult, 
if not impossible, for them to understand any purpose or cause 
for such revolutionary changes other than mere vengeance of 
their enemies and this alone would strongly tend towards the 
most bitter reactions. 

"I am prepared to accede to the argument that even if 
German resources were wiped off the map, the European 
economy would somehow readjust itself, perhaps with the 
help of Great Britain and this country. And the world would 
go on. The benefit to England by the suppression of German 
competition is greatly stressed in the Treasury memorandum. 
But this is an argument addressed to a shortsighted cupidity 
of the victors and the negation of all that Secretary Hull has 
been trying to accomplish since 1933. I am aware of England's 
need, but I do not and cannot believe that she wishes this kind 
of remedy. I feel certain that in her own interest she could not 
afford to follow this path. The total elimination of a com- 
petitor (who is always also a potential purchaser) is rarely 
a satisfactory solution of a commercial problem. 

"The sum total of the drastic political and economic steps 
proposed by the Treasury is an open confession of the bank- 
ruptcy of hope for a reasonable economic and political 
settlement of the causes of war." 



580 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

This paper was sent to Mr. Roosevelt at Hyde Park via 
Harry Hopkins. At the end of the week Stimson received 
word that the President had read it and would like to talk 
with him about it. "I hope this is a good symptom but I dare 
not be too sure." (Diary, September 23, 24, 1944) Then on 
Sunday the twenty-fourth, to Stimson's annoyance, but not 
surprise, a report of the Cabinet disagreement (but not includ- 
ing the Documents) was published in the newspapers. Three 
days earlier a pro-Treasury version had been put out by Drew 
Pearson. The immediate press reaction was strongly in favor 
of Hull and Stimson (the Secretary of State had completely 
reversed his initial and tentative position) ; the bulk of the 
press strongly attacked Morgenthau, and the President too for 
reportedly backing him. On Wednesday the twenty- seventh 
Mr. Roosevelt telephoned to Stimson, who was at Highhold. 
"He . . . was evidently under the influence of the impact of 
criticism which has followed his decision to follow Morgen- 
thau's advice. The papers have taken it up violently and almost 
unanimously against Morgenthau and the President himself, 
and the impact has been such that he had already evidently 
reached the conclusion that he had made a false step and was 
trying to work out of it. ... He told mevthat he didn't really 
intend to try to make Germany a purely agricultural country 
but said that his underlying motive was the very confidential 
one that England was broke ; that something must be done to 
give her more business to pull out of the depression after the 
war, and he evidently hoped that by something like the Mor- 
genthau plan Britain might inherit Germany's Ruhr business. 
I had already treated that argument in one of my memoranda 
sent to the President while the controversy was on, so I said 
nothing further about it." The two men agreed to discuss the 
matter further on Stimson's return to Washington. 

On October 3 Stimson had lunch with the President. Mr. 
Roosevelt was apparently very tired and unwell, but "he was 
very friendly, although in evident discomfort, and I put my 
propositions to him with all the friendliness and tact possible 
and after all I feel a very real and deep friendship for him. 
So the program went through as follows : 

"... I reminded him that he had asked me to talk with him 
when we next met about our issue over the treatment of Ger- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 581 

many. He grinned and looked naughty and said 'Henry Mor- 
genthau pulled a boner' or an equivalent expression, and said 
that we really were not apart on that; that he had no intention 
of turning Germany into an agrarian state and that all he 
wanted was to save a portion of the proceeds of the Ruhr for 
use by Great Britain (which was 'broke') . . . leaving some of 
the products of the Ruhr for Germany. This he considered to 
be the only method of achieving a very desirable end which he 
could think of or which had been suggested. He got so affirma- 
tive to this effect that I warned him that the paper which 
Churchill had drawn and which he had initialed did contain 
the proposition of converting Germany 'into a country prima- 
rily agricultural and pastoral in its character/ and I read him 
the three sentences beginning with the one saying that 'the in- 
dustries referred to in the Ruhr and in the Saar would therefore 
be necessarily put out of action and closed down' down to the 
last sentence saying that 'this programme for eliminating the 
warmaking industries in the Ruhr and in the Saar is looking 
forward to converting Germany into a country primarily 
agricultural and pastoral in its character.' He was frankly 
staggered by this and said he had no idea how he could have 
initialed this ; that he had evidently done it without much 
thought. 

"I told him that in my opinion the most serious danger of 
the situation was the getting abroad of the idea of vengeance 
instead of preventive punishment and that it was the language 
in the Treasury paper which had alarmed me on this subject. 
I told him that, knowing his liking for brevity and slogans, 
I had tried to think of a brief crystallization of the way I 
looked at it. I said I thought that our problem was analogous 
to the problem of an operation for cancer where it is necessary 
, to cut deeply to get out the malignant tissue even at the expense 
of much sound tissue in the process, but not to the extent of 
cutting out any vital organs which by killing the patient would 
frustrate the benefit of the operation. I said in the same way 
that what we were after was preventive punishment, even 
educative punishment, but not vengeance. I told him that I 
had throughout had in mind his postwar leadership in which 
he would represent America. I said throughout the war his 
leadership had been on a high moral plane and he had fought 



582 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

for the highest moral objectives. Now during the postwar 
readjustment 'You must not poison this position,' which he 
and our country held, with anything like mere hatred or venge- 
ance. In the course of the talk I told him of my personal 
friendship for Henry Morgenthau who had been so kind to me 
when I first came into the Cabinet and that I had shuddered 
when he took the leadership in such a campaign against Ger- 
many. . . ." 

Stimson never discussed the "pastoral Germany" issue again 
with the President; it was clear that Mr. Roosevelt had never 
really intended to carry out the Morgenthau plan, and that 
the Quebec memorandum did not represent his matured opin- 
ions. Governmental discussions of policy toward Germany 
were resumed at a lower level, and McCloy carried the burden 
for the War Department. 

But if Secretary Morgenthau's plan was discarded, the 
attitude which it represented remained, and continuous pres- 
sure was exerted throughout the winter before VE-day for a 
stern directive to General Eisenhower on the treatment of 
Germany. The eventual product of the debate was the direc- 
tive known as J.C.S. 1067 f rereading this order two years 
later, Stimson found it a painfully negative document. Al- 
though it contained no orders for economic destruction, it 
certainly was not designed to make the rebuilding of Germany 
an easy task, and indeed it explicitly ordered the American 
military governor to "take no steps (a) looking toward the 
economic rehabilitation of Germany or (b) designed to main- 
tain or strengthen the German economy" with the exception 
that he might act to insure reparation payments and to prevent 
starvation or rebellion. Yet in the spring of 1945 J.C.S. 1067 
seemed so much less punitive and destructive than earlier pro- 
posals that Stimson found its final draft "a fairly good paper." 
(Diary, March 29, 1945) 

The question remained essentially one of attitude, and dur- 
ing the remaining months of his service Stimson constantly 
urged that there was no place for clumsy economic vengeance 
in American policy toward Germany. On May 16 he wrote 
at Mr. Truman's request a memorandum summarizing views 
already orally expressed to the new President. "Early pro- 

2 Published in Dept. of State Bulletin, Vol. XIII (1945) pp. 596-607. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 583 

posals for the treatment of Germany provided for keeping 
Germany near the margin of hunger as a means of punishment 
for past misdeeds. I have felt that this was a grave mistake. 
Punish her war criminals in full measure. Deprive her per- 
manently of her weapons, her General Staff, and perhaps her 
entire army. Guard her governmental action until the Nazi- 
educated generation has passed from the stage admittedly a 
long job. But do not deprive her of the means of building up 
ultimately a contented Germany interested in following non- 
militaristic methods of civilization. This must necessarily 
involve some industrialization, for Germany today has ap- 
proximately thirty million excess population beyond what can 
be supported by agriculture alone. The eighty million Ger- 
mans and Austrians in Central Europe today necessarily swing 
the balance of that continent. A solution must be found for 
their future peaceful existence and it is to the interest of the 
whole world that they should not be driven by stress of hard- 
ship into a nondemocratic and necessarily predatory habit of 
life." (Memorandum for the President, May 16, 1945) 

In a further conversation with Mr. Truman on July 3, just 
before both men left for Potsdam, Stimson found that his 
views were fully shared by the White House. From this time 
forward American policy was more and more directed toward 
reconstruction of a denazified, demilitarized, but economi- 
cally sound Germany. Unfortunately vestiges of the old atti- 
tude remained at lower levels. Still more unfortunately, the 
execution of American policy was necessarily dependent upon 
inter- Allied agreement, and in the two years that followed the 
Potsdam Conference of 1945 the difficulty of securing effective 
agreement became even more clear. The German question 
became part of a still larger and more complicated subject 
American policy toward Soviet Russia. 

NOTE: In 1948, when the issue over the Morgenthau plan had given way to a very 
different debate over the control and use of the resources of the Ruhr, it seemed 
important to remark that Stimson's position in 1944 and 1945 did not in any way 
commit him to support the reconstruction of Germany as against the reconstruction 
of France and other liberated countries. His general sympathies, indeed, ran in exactly 
the opposite direction. During his debate with Morgenthau and afterward he 
repeatedly made clear his belief that French claims upon Ruhr production deserved 
a most sympathetic hearing, and he believed too that France should share in the 
international control of the Ruhr. But he could not believe that the French interest, 
or any humane interest, would be served by a policy of deliberate destruction or by 
an attempt to make of Germany a land of permanent paupers. 



5 84 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

3. THE CRIME OF AGGRESSIVE WAR 

Concurrent with the struggle over the Morgenthau plan, 
and intertwined with it, was a debate over the proper treat- 
ment of the Nazi leaders. In this debate too Stimson was 
active, and because in his view the eventual result was a strik- 
ing triumph for the cause of law and peace, his share in the 
matter deserves detailed attention. 

One of the proposals in the Morgenthau memorandum of 
September 6 was that a list should be made of German arch- 
criminals men whose obvious guilt was generally recognized 
by the United Nations and that upon capture and identifica- 
tion these men should be shot at once. Commenting on this 
proposal in his paper of September 9, Stimson wrote: 

"The other fundamental point upon which I feel we differ 
is the matter of the trial and punishment of those Germans 
who are responsible for crimes and depredations. Under the 
plan proposed by Mr. Morgenthau, the so-called archcrimi- 
nals shall be put to death by the military without provision 
for any trial and upon mere identification after apprehension. 
The method of dealing with these and other criminals requires 
careful thought and a well-defined procedure. Such procedure 
must embody, in my judgment, at least the rudimentary aspects 
of the Bill of Rights, namely, notification to the accused of 
the charge, the right to be heard and, within reasonable limits, 
to call witnesses in his defense. I do not mean to favor the 
institution of state trials or to introduce any cumbersome 
machinery but the very punishment of these men in a dignified 
manner consistent with the advance of civilization, will have 
all the greater effect upon posterity. Furthermore, it will 
afford the most effective way of making a record of the Nazi 
system of terrorism and of the effort of the Allies to terminate 
the system and prevent its recurrence. 

"I am disposed to believe that at least as to the chief Nazi 
officials, we should participate in an international tribunal 
constituted to try them. They should be charged with offenses 
against the laws of the Rules of War in that they have com- 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 585 

mitted wanton and unnecessary cruelties in connection with 
the prosecution of the war. This law of the Rules of War has 
been upheld by our own Supreme Court and will be the basis 
of judicial action against the Nazis. 

"Even though these offenses have not been committed 
against our troops, I feel that our moral position is better if 
we take our share in their conviction. Other war criminals 
who have committed crimes in subjugated territory should be 
returned in accordance with the Moscow Declaration to those 
territories for trial by national military commissions having 
jurisdiction of the offense under the same Rules of War. I 
have great difficulty in finding any means whereby military 
commissions may try and convict those responsible for excesses 
committed within Germany both before and during the war 
which have no relation to the conduct of the war. I would be 
prepared to construe broadly what constituted a violation of 
the Rules of War but there is a certain field in which I fear 
that external courts cannot move. Such courts would be with- 
out jurisdiction in precisely the same way that any foreign 
court would be without jurisdiction to try those who were 
guilty of, or condoned, lynching in our own country." 

The question of trial as against shooting was not decided at 
Quebec, but Stimson heard from McCloy reports that the 
President had there expressed himself as definitely in favor of 
execution without trial. It seemed probable that this was only 
a curbstone opinion, but it was deeply disturbing to the Wai- 
Department, and Stimson and McCloy promptly set up a 
group of military lawyers to study in detail the possibilities 
for a trial. After a month of study these lawyers reported to 
the Secretary. 

"Our meeting lasted for an hour and a half and was deeply 
interesting. These men had reached the conclusion that besides 
local tribunals to punish war crimes against the international 
Rules of War, we could for the same purpose establish an 
international tribunal if we wished it or mixed tribunals, the 
latter to prosecute criminals whose criminal activities had 
extended over several jurisdictions. . . . Colonel Bernays of 
the JAGD gave an interesting talk on the possibility of bring- 



586 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

ing charges against the whole scheme of Nazi totalitarian 
war, using for the promotion of its end methods of warfare 
which were in conflict with the established Rules of War. This 
was virtually upon the theory of a conspiracy and I then told 
them of my experience as United States Attorney in finding 
that only by [charging] conspiracy could we properly cope 
with the evils which arose under our complicated development 
of big business. In many respects the task which we have to 
cope with now in the development of the Nazi scheme of ter- 
rorism is much like the development of big business. It was a 
very interesting talk and carried my mind farther along the 
line which it has been following in connection with dealing 
with the German secret police and the forms of secret police 
itself among other nations." (Diary, October 24, 1944) 

The concept of conspiracy became more and more, in Stim- 
son's mind, the guide to a proper course in trying Nazi leaders. 
The advantages of showing the whole gigantic wickedness for 
what it was quite outweighed his initial distaste for a complex 
state trial, and he made his point not long after to the Presi- 
dent. "I told him the story of the seventeen holes the case 
which I tried against the American Sugar Refining Company. 
He was greatly interested in this and gave his very frank 
approval to my suggestion when I said that conspiracy with 
all of the actors brought in from the top to the bottom, or 
rather with representatives of all classes of actors brought in 
from top to bottom, would be the best way to try it and would 
give us a record and also a trial which would certainly per- 
suade any onlooker of the evil of the Nazi system. In fact he 
was very nice about it." (Diary, November 21, 1944) 

Meanwhile the War Department committee worked on, 
and in January its report was completed. In January, too, the 
President, shifting somewhat from his earlier view, appointed 
Judge Samuel Rosenman to study the question for him. Meet- 
ing with Rosenman, Joseph P. Davies, Attorney General 
Biddle, and others on January 18, "I was glad to find they 
were all in favor of legal action rather than political action 
against the head Nazis, and secondly, that in their study of 
the proper kind of legal action they were coming to the view 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 587 

which I have held from the first 3 that we had better stage up 
a big trial in which we can prove the whole Nazi conspiracy 
to wage a totalitarian war of aggression violating in its prog- 
ress all of the regular rules which limit needless cruelty and 
destruction." 

This was the tenor of the War Department's own recom- 
mendations, which Stimson signed "with great satisfaction" 
on January 21. Two days before, he had argued his position 
once more with Mr. Roosevelt, hoping to keep the President 
from any hasty decision at the forthcoming Yalta Conference. 
Stimson rehearsed to the President the views he shared with 
his committee and with Judge Rosenman and the Attorney 
General's office. He emphasized again the advantage of a trial 
as against political action. Mr. Roosevelt "assented to what 
I said but in the hurry of the situation I am not sure whether 
it registered." (Diary, January 19, 1945) 

The last view of Mr. Roosevelt Stimson never knew, fot 
when the final decision was taken in May another man was 
President, but after these meetings and recommendations of 
January there was never any serious question that the Ameri- 
can Government favored a state trial. To Stimson's great sur- 
prise the principal opposition to legal proceedings came from 
the British, who for a long time urged direct military execu- 
tions instead. But with firm French and Russian support, the 
American view prevailed, and in August, 1945, there was 
signed at London a four-power agreement chartering the 
International Tribunal which met at Nuremberg the follow- 
ing November. In the international negotiations which led to 
the London Charter Stimson had no part, but he watched with 
great admiration the work done for his country at London and 
later at Nuremberg by Mr. Justice Jackson. 

Both during and after the Nuremberg trial there was a 
considerable debate in the United States and elsewhere over 
its legality. To Stimson it was not merely legal but so clearly 

8 "From the first" is not quite accurate ; as a matter of fact Stimson was skeptical 
about the trying of war criminals on the charge of aggressive war when it was first 
suggested to him by his law partner, William Chanler. He thought it "a little in 
advance of international thought" (Memorandum to McCloy, November 28, 1944) 
and it was only after further consideration that he became an ardent advocate of the 
principle. 



588 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

so that any other course would have been crassly illegal. From 
his retirement he wrote for Foreign Affairs a careful explana- 
tion of his view. The central argument of the article 4 represents 
so plainly his general attitude toward the international law 
of war that it is here quoted in part. 

The principal complaint leveled against Nuremberg was 
that its charter dared to name aggressive war as a punishable 
crime. In Stimson's view this was its greatest glory, and to this 
point he addressed the bulk of his argument: 

"The defendants at Nuremberg were leaders of the most 
highly organized and extensive wickedness in history. It was 
not a trick of law which brought them to the bar ; it was the 
'massed angered forces of common humanity.' . . . 

"The Charter of the Tribunal recognizes three kinds of 
crime, all of which were charged in the indictment: crimes 
against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. There 
was a fourth charge, of conspiracy to commit one or all of 
these crimes. To me personally this fourth charge is the most 
realistic of them all, for the Nazi crime is in the end indivis- 
ible. Each of the myriad transgressions was an interlocking 
part of the whole gigantic barbarity. But basically it is the first 
three that we must consider. The fourth is built on them. 

"Of the three charges, only one has been seriously criticized. 
. , . The charge of crimes against peace . . . has been the chief 
target of most of the honest critics of Nuremberg. It is under 
this charge that a penalty has been asked, for the first time, 
against the individual leaders in a war of aggression. It is this 
that well-intentioned critics have called 'ex post facto law'." 

The charge of ex post facto law rested on the indubitable 
fact that the Nuremberg proceeding was unprecedented. But 
Stimson argued that the climate of opinion in which the Nazis 
launched their war of aggression was also unprecedented. In 
the years after the First World War the community of nations 
had repeatedly denounced aggression as criminal, most con- 
spicuously in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. "In the judg- 
ment of the peoples of the world the once proud title of 
'conqueror' was replaced by the criminal epithet 'aggressor'." 

It was of course quite true, as critics of Nuremberg argued, 

*"The Nuremberg Trial: Landmark in Law," Foreign Affairs, January, 1947. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 589 

that before 1945 there was little to indicate that the "peoples 
of the world" were prepared to accept the capture and convic- 
tion of such aggressors as a legal duty. "But it is vitally impor- 
tant to remember that a legal right is not lost merely because 
temporarily it is not used. . . . Our offense was thus that of the 
man who passed by on the other side. That we have finally 
recognized our negligence and named the criminals for what 
they are is a piece of righteousness too long delayed by fear." 

Then Stimson came to the heart of the matter. 

"We did not ask ourselves, in 1939 or 1940, or even in 1941, 
what punishment, if any, Hitler and his chief assistants de- 
served. We asked simply two questions: How do we avoid 
war, and how do we keep this wickedness from overwhelming 
us? These seemed larger questions to us than the guilt or inno- 
cence of individuals. In the end we found an answer to the 
second question, but none to the first. The crime of the Nazis, 
against us, lay in this very fact: that their making of aggressive 
war made peace here impossible. We have now seen again, in 
hard and deadly terms, what had been proved in 1917 that 
'peace is indivisible.' The man who makes aggressive war at 
all makes war against mankind. That is an exact, not a rhetori- 
cal description of the crime of aggressive war. 

"Thus the Second World War brought it home to us that 
our repugnance to aggressive war was incomplete without a 
judgment of its leaders. What we had called a crime demanded 
punishment; we must bring our law in balance with the uni- 
versal moral judgment of mankind. The wickedness of aggres- 
sion must be punished by a trial and judgment. This is what 
has been done at Nuremberg. 

"Now this is a new judicial process, but it is not ex post facto 
law. It is the enforcement of a moral judgment which dates 
back a generation. It is a growth in the application of law 
that any student of our common law should recognize as 
natural and proper, for it is in just this manner that the com- 
mon law grew up. There was, somewhere in our distant past, 
a first case of murder, a first case where the tribe replaced the 
victim's family as judge of the offender. The tribe had learned 
that the deliberate and malicious killing of any human being 
was, and must be treated as, an offense against the whole com- 



590 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

munity. The analogy is exact. All case law grows by new deci- 
sions, and where those new decisions match the conscience of 
the community, they are law as truly as the law of murder. 
They do not become ex post facto law merely because until 
the first decision and punishment comes, a man's only warning 
that he offends is in the general sense and feeling of his fellow 
men. 

"The charge of aggressive war is unsound, therefore, only 
if the community of nations did not believe in 1939 that 
aggressive war was an offense. Merely to make such a sugges- 
tion, however, is to discard it. Aggression is an offense, and 
we all know it; we have known it for a generation. It is an 
offense so deep and heinous that we cannot endure its repeti- 
tion. 

"The law made effective by the trial at Nuremberg is right- 
eous law long overdue. It is in just such cases as this one that 
the law becomes more nearly what Mr. Justice Holmes called 
it: 'the witness and external deposit of our moral life.' 

"With the judgment of Nuremberg we at last reach to the 
very core of international strife, and we set a penalty not 
merely for war crimes, but for the very act of war itself, except 
in self-defense." 

This was to Stimson the great accomplishment of Nurem- 
berg, and after devoting some attention to other lesser aspects 
of its achievement, he returned to the same point, from a 
slightly different angle, in his concluding paragraphs. Not 
merely was aggression now a crime, but in a sense it was the 
only important crime connected with war. For in World War 
II it had been shown that there is not much restraint or hu- 
manity left in modern warfare, once the bloody contest has 
begun. 

"We as well as our enemies have contributed to the proof 
that the central moral problem is war and not its methods, and 
that a continuance of war will in all probability end with the 
destruction of our civilization. 

"International law is still limited by international politics, 
and we must not pretend that either can live and grow without 
the other. But in the judgment of Nuremberg there is affirmed 
the central principle of peace that the man who makes or 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 591 

plans to make aggressive war is a criminal. A standard has 
been raised to which Americans, at least, must repair; for it 
is only as this standard is accepted, supported, and enforced 
that we can move onward to a world of law and peace." 

4. PLANNING FOR RECONSTRUCTION 

The treatment of Germany and her leaders was important, 
but still more important was the general framework of Ameri- 
can policy toward the postwar world. In this larger frame- 
work, as in the matter of Germany itself, Stimson's work was 
that of an adviser representing the War Department in the 
nation's councils ; he had of course no authority and no respon- 
sibility in the larger task of advancing the American position 
among divergent Allied views. But the interest of the War 
Department and his own deep concern with foreign affairs 
combined to lead him during 1945 to the framing of a 
fairly comprehensive position on American policy. This posi- 
tion, constantly including as basic elements his long-standing 
insistence on friendship with Great Britain and recognition 
of economic reality, involved three additional general princi- 
ples: America must participate in world affairs; America 
must be strong and secure; and America must get along with 
her wartime allies. Illustrations of his interpretation of each 
of these three principles were not lacking in 1944 and 1945. 

As Secretary Hull again and again emphasized in his regu- 
lar meetings with Stimson, the critical question of the postwar 
period was whether or not the United States would truly 
become a participating and effective member of the world 
community. Uncertain as the path to peace might be, it seemed 
clear that the decision of 1920 had led up a blind alley; the 
bankruptcy of isolationism was evident. 

Upon the proper nature and extent of future American 
participation in world affairs there was less agreement. Stim- 
son inclined to agree with Hull that here, as in the peace 
treaties, economics was central. America must so organize her 
trade and her foreign finance that the world might achieve 
the economic stability which had never been approached after 
1918. In long-range terms, this meant a constant effort to 



592 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

expand American foreign trade, and especially American 
imports, by the kind of policy so valiantly begun by Mr. Hull 
twelve years before. When the Reciprocal Trade Agreements 
Act was extended in May, 1945, Stimson warmly congratu- 
lated President Truman. "I told him that I had always re- 
garded these treaties as the fundamental basis for our postwar 
condition and that I thoroughly shared his views and was 
greatly relieved at the good size of the vote." (Diary, May 

27, 1945) 

Though proper long-range trade policy seemed the funda- 
mental requirement, Stimson's thinking during the last year 
of the war was largely directed toward the more pressing 
immediate problems of reconstruction and rehabilitation. The 
relief operations directed by Army civil affairs officers in some 
areas and UNRRA officials in others he thoroughly approved 
in principle, but in looking ahead he believed the main diffi- 
culty to lie nearer home in American unawareness of the 
scale of help required by the prostrated nations in war areas. 
In his approach to this difficulty Stimson found himself once 
again differing somewhat from other administration leaders. 

Mr. Roosevelt and his advisers were thoroughly alive to the 
bitter need for American assistance existing in Allied coun- 
tries, and particularly in the case of Great Britain they were 
determined that this help must be provided. British needs, 
eloquently explained by Prime Minister Churchill, were a 
major subject of discussion at Quebec in September, 1944, 
and Mr. Roosevelt returned to Washington determined to 
plan for and furnish further American assistance. But to Stim- 
son's alarm he appeared to intend using the Lend-Lease Act 
for this purpose. Although possibly legal, such a course seemed 
to Stimson most unwise, and at the Cabinet meeting on Octo- 
ber 13 he explained his position: 

"I got involved enough to say that the only point that I 
thought came my way in that was that, as one of the members 
in the debate before the congressional committee for the origi- 
nal Lend-Lease,. I was a witness of the representations made 
to Congress and that I knew perfectly well that Congress had 
made the lend-lease appropriations on the representations that 
it was in aid of an actual war effort to help an ally who was 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 593 

actually fighting for us and not for the purpose of rehabilitat- 
ing a nation which was not fighting or appropriations which 
were not, in other words, an aid to our own war effort. I there- 
fore thought that if we were going to go into making use of 
lend-lease appropriations in the postwar period or when there 
was no longer any connection between them and the actual 
fighting of the recipient, we ought to consult Congress. I did 
not at all oppose the purpose but I thought it would be very 
dangerous to go ahead under the original authority which was 
aimed at another objective." (Diary, October 13, 1944) 

In the end no significant postwar assistance was given under 
the alleged authority of Lend-Lease, but in Stimson's opinion 
the discussions looking toward this goal had the unfortunate 
effect of preventing adequate consideration of and preparation 
for a more forthright and farsighted approach to the same 
general goal. He would have preferred "a great act of states- 
manship on the part of the President" (Diary, November 22, 
1944) to close out the British lend-lease account, with its 
enormous balance in favor of the Americans, followed by a 
further act of statesmanship to provide help on a similar basis 
after the war. Such a course would obviously have required 
"a great effort of education," but it would have had the advan- 
tage of proceeding in an atmosphere of war, instead of in the 
cooler and more cautious time of 1946, when a somewhat cold- 
blooded British loan was with great difficulty passed through 
Congress. But Stimson was forced to admit that in part this 
was hindsight, for it was not until well after 1944 that he came 
to a full appreciation of the desperate nature of the British 
economic position. 

That not only Britain but all of Europe would need large- 
scale American help was wholly clear to Stimson by July, 
1945, however, after he had seen, on his way to Potsdam, the 
devastation left by the war. This was a challenge larger than 
that of Germany, or even Great Britain it involved the very 
survival of Europe. In a memorandum submitted to the Presi- 
dent on July 22 he summarized his view of American respon- 
sibility in the situation. In this paper he tied the German 
question in with the problem of Europe as a whole. 

"I am impressed with the great loss in economic values on 



594 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the Continent, but even more with the loss in widespread 
moral values which destruction and war conditions have 
caused in Europe. 

"We have immediate interests in a return to stable con- 
ditions the elimination of distress conditions to ease our 
problems of administration and the speed and success of our 
redeployment. But our long-range interests are far greater and 
much more significant 

"One hope for the future is the restoration of stable condi- 
tions in Europe, for only thus can concepts of individual 
liberty, free thought, and free speech be nurtured. Under 
famine, disease, and distress conditions, no territory or people 
will be concerned about concepts of free speech, individual 
liberty, and free political action. All the opposite concepts 
flourish in such an atmosphere. If democratic interests are not 
given an opportunity to grow in western and middle Europe, 
there is little possibility they will ever be planted in Russian 
minds. 

"I therefore urge . . . that Germany shall be given an oppor- 
tunity to live and work; that controls be exercised over the 
German people only in so far as our basic objectives absolutely 
require, and that the ethnological and economic groupings of 
Germany should be disturbed only where considerations make 
it inescapable. We cannot be misled by the thought that 
because many plants, at least on our side of the line, exist in 
relative integrity, that German economy can readily be re- 
stored. I am satisfied that it cannot be unless there is a flow of 
commerce, establishment of transportation systems, and stable 
currency. The Russian policy on booty in eastern Germany, 
if it is as I have heard it reported, is rather oriental. It is 
bound to force us to preserve the economy in western Germany 
in close co-operation with the British, so as to avoid conditions 
in our areas which, in the last analysis, neither British nor 
American public opinion would long tolerate. 

"Secondly, I urge that a completely co-ordinated plan be 
adopted for the economic rehabilitation of Europe as a whole; 
that in doing this, all the economic benefits which the United 
States can bestow, such as war surplus disposal, Export-Import 
Bank credits, etc., be channeled through one man and one 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 595 

agency. Our means must be concentrated in one agency in 
order to use all'our power to achieve our ends. Diverse policy 
and diverse methods of distribution lead to competition in 
bestowal of favors and interfere with the carrying out of the 
only effective and politically supportable program, namely, 
one of helping Europe to help herself. 

"There are large food, fuel, and industrial sources in 
Europe, and, if all resources are marshaled, much can be done 
to achieve stability in Europe with the promptitude and in 
the degree necessary to preserve democratic governments. It 
does require a period of management in which I am con- 
vinced we have to take a part. I would recommend one United 
States agency as I have indicated, and I would feel that an 
Economic Council for Europe should be set up. The chairman 
should be an American, in whose hands, subject to the author- 
ity of the President and pursuant to the directions of the 
central United States agency just recommended, would be 
vested the disposition in Europe of all benefits flowing from 
the United States. Other members of the Council would consist 
of the representatives of other contributing powers who would 
be similarly authorized. They should act in close liaison with 
the Control Council for Germany, and their duties should be, 
over a limited period, to assist the governments of Europe to 
help themselves in the restoration of stable conditions." 

In the two years that followed his submission of this memo- 
randum Stimson saw no reason to alter the essentials of the 
recommendations it contained. The surface aspect of the situ- 
ation changed as the immediate postwar period passed and 
American war assets on the spot were largely liquidated. But 
the need for American assistance continued and his estimate 
of the quantity of assistance needed was if anything increased 
by the passage of time. 

5. A STRONG AMERICA 

The difficulty of achieving popular understanding of Amer- 
ica's place in the modern world was a favorite subject for 
Stimson's meetings with Secretary Hull, and sometimes when 
they had exhausted their stock of epithets for isolationism, 



59 6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

chey would shift their fire through a wide arc and take aim at 
the "fuzzy-minded idealists." To both men the world in 
which the United States was called to participate was the real 
world, fully equipped with problems and difficulties, and not 
an abstraction waiting for Good Will to give it life in a New 
Age of Lasting Peace. To Stimson as Secretary of War it was 
especially disturbing to note that very often the people who 
talked most persuasively about American responsibility for 
peace were the ones who seemed least aware of any connection 
between this responsibility and the maintenance of American 
strength. His own view was entirely different; he could not 
conceive of an effective United States except as a nation 
equipped with the military establishment required for a lead- 
ing power. Twice in 1945 there arose questions which drew 
from him clear statements of this position. 

On June 15, 1945, Stimson appeared before the Committee 
on Postwar Military Policy of the House of Representatives 
to testify in favor of peacetime universal military training. 
The argument he there developed was his final judgment on 
a subject to which he had given thirty years of study. Much 
of his statement was of course devoted to the specific advan- 
tages of universal training as a method of maintaining effective 
national defense, and another large section was given over to 
an attack on the notion that military training would lead to 
militarism. He also explained in some detail the incidental 
advantages which he had found for himself in military service 
arid which he believed were found by most men. But the core 
of the argument was in a few paragraphs in the beginning; 
here he connected military preparedness with the maintenance 
of peace. 

"I believe that a necessary foundation on which to build 
the security of the United States is a system of universal mili- 
tary training. And in saying this I intend the broadest meaning 
of the term 'security.' I mean not merely protection against 
the physical invasion of our territory. I mean the security 
which goes with the strong and tested character of the citizen- 
ship of a nation, 1 giving to that nation a leadership among the 
peoples of the world and a well-founded respect for it on their 
part which swells its power and influence. . . . 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 597 

"In the first place, let me speak of universal military train- 
ing as necessary for the physical protection of our country and 
its people. Never in my long life have we lived in a world 
where the very civilization of humanity has become so broken 
and unsettled; where the methods of war have become so 
brutal and so far-reaching in their peril as today; and where 
the respect of civilized man for those constitutional safeguards 
of government, not to say even, the traditions of religious and 
humanitarian regard of one group of human beings for an- 
other, have become so shaken. . . . 

". . . And no matter how dearly we may desire to preserve 
our way of life by peaceful persuasion alone, no matter how 
earnestly we may deplore the resort by other nations to aggres- 
sive force to gain their ends, these attitudes of peaceful persua- 
sion can never be a substitute for the physical means of our 
own self-preservation certainly not in such a world as that 
we now live in. No nation is fit to assume responsibility for 
others unless it is capable of being responsible for itself. 

"Universal military training is the fundamental basis of 
such security. No matter how complicated the weapons of war 
may become, no matter how necessary to the nation's future 
security are programs for scientific research and industrial 
mobilization, the disciplined, trained, and patriotic citizenry 
of a nation remain the bricks of the foundation upon which the 
other methods and means of security rest. 

"But in the second place, beyond and above any responsi- 
bility attending her own sovereignty, there now attaches to 
the United States as a great world power a further 'duty. In 
a short span of years we have seen our nation emerge as a 
leading power of the world. It is worse than idle to blink the 
responsibility which goes with this position. Already in almost 
every international emergency which arises, the eyes of the 
other nations turn to us for leadership. Our country's retention 
in the years to come of a stature befitting such a position will 
depend in my judgment upon her possession of the balanced 
elements of greatness which now support her responsible posi- 
tion in the family of nations. Particularly she must retain her 
capacity effectively to discharge her obligations under the 
world peace organizations which are now in process of being 



598 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

formed. The ideals which inspired the world plan now being 
framed in San Francisco must be supported and made to work 
by methods of known efficacy by the use of force in the last 
analysis if necessary to prevent the depredations of an aggres- 
sor. 

"Again I speak from personal experience. From my service 
as Secretary of State during a period of national isolationism 
and irresponsibility for world affairs, I realize only too well 
the futility of what the Chinese call 'spears of straw' and 
'swords of ice' when the first steps of a new war are seen 
approaching. In this disordered world, for decades to come, 
the success of a program for peace will depend upon the main- 
tenance of sufficient strength by those who are responsible for 
that peace. To advocate any Dumbarton plan and then to shear 
ourselves of the power to carry it out would be even worse than 
our refusal to join the attempt at world organization in 1919. 
Although the objectives of a program for collective peace are 
loftier and more idealistic than the mere defense of national 
sovereignty, they take root in the same soil of national self- 
interest. The goal of each peace-loving nation is still its 
individual security, a goal now sought to be attained through 
the collective security of all nations. 

"Thus to meet our obligation of bearing our full share in 
preserving world peace, a part of America's present military 
readiness should be retained." 

At the end of his statement, he was asked a question by the 
committee chairman, Congressman Woodrum, which brought 
out a still stronger statement. Would he comment "in regard 
to the suggestion that has been made, that for the United States 
now, while the San Francisco Convention is laboring in the 
cause of setting up a world organization, to take any step of 
this kind would be not only an evidence of our lack of faith 
in their efforts, but would be construed as an overt act by our 
present allies and other nations." 

Stimson replied that "to know that we are taking such a 
precautionary and preventive step against war . . . would have 
just the opposite effect; ... it would show that we were in 
earnest. . . . The people who for a long time have got to pre- 
serve the peace are the people who have brought about the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 599 

peace by the victories in this war. The fact that those people 
keep their armor girded on will be the best deterrent in the 
world against any one aggressor in the future, and such an 
aggressor would know, at the same time, that we had shared in 
forming this new organization at San Francisco and we were 
prepared to defend it and to make it work. The worst thing 
we did to break the chance of peace after the last war, and to 
tempt willful nations toward aggression, was to keep out. 

"We did two things : We kept out of all efforts to organize, 
and we dissolved all our armies and took no precautions 
against a future war. 

"It was those two things which made America in quite a 
large share, in my opinion responsible for what came after- 
ward." 

6. BASES AND BIG POWERS 

More complex, and perhaps more significant, than his feel- 
ings on military training was Stimson's attitude on the vexed 
issue of American policy toward certain Pacific islands won 
from Japan during the Pacific war. In what way, if any, 
should American authority for these islands be subjected to 
the new systems of trusteeship under the United Nations? 
During the first months of 1945 there developed within the 
Government a considerable debate over this question. 

The State Department, in preparing for the San Francisco 
Conference, wished to formulate a general American policy 
toward areas of the kind which under the League of Nations 
had been "mandates" areas in which colonial people not 
ready for self-government were governed by member nations 
accountable for their stewardship to the League. It was the 
hope of President Roosevelt that the mandate principle, exer- 
cised by the League only in a limited number of places, most 
of them territories formerly owned by Imperial Germany, 
might now be extended so far as possible to all colonial terri- 
tories, whether or not these territories had been held by the 
enemy before the war. 

Since most such territories were the legal property of other 
nations behind whose ownership rested all the national pride 
and self-interest associated with colonialism, it was evident 



6oo ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

that such a hope could hardly be effectively expressed by the 
United States unless she too were prepared to submit to the 
new principle. Accordingly it was planned that any islands 
retained by the United States in the Pacific should be held by 
her only in trusteeship from the United Nations. 

In principle this proposal was unobjectionable, but to Stim- 
son it seemed dangerously unrealistic; his own immediate 
object was to protect American interests in the Pacific islands, 
and he did not believe that any useful purpose was served by 
classing such islands with colonial areas containing large 
populations and considerable economic resources. "They [the 
Pacific islands] do not really belong in such a classification. 
Acquisition of them by the United States does not represent 
an attempt at colonization or exploitation. Instead it is merely 
the acquisition by the United States of the necessary bases for 
the defense of the security of the Pacific for the future world. 
To serve such a purpose they must belong to the United States 
with absolute power to rule and fortify them. They are not 
colonies; they are outposts, and their acquisition, is appropri- 
ate under the general doctrine of self-defense by the power 
which guarantees the safety of that area of the world." 5 To 
Stimson this proposition seemed beyond debate; World War 
II had made wholly evident the fact that the United States 
must be the principal guarantor of the peace of the Pacific, 
and it had also demonstrated the outstanding strategic signifi- 
cance of the scores of small atolls held before 1941 by the 
Japanese in the western Pacific. After World War I, ignoring 
the warnings of Army and Navy leaders, the American Gov- 
ernment had permitted the western Pacific islands to be man- 
dated to Japan, on assurances that they would not be fortified. 
The folly of this decision was written in blood. An equal error 
had been committed in the Four-Power Treaty of 1921, under 
which the United States had agreed not to add to the fortifica- 
tions of the Philippines, and Stimson was insistent that there 
should this time be no such mistake. He had not himself 
understood in 1921 the dangers of such agreements; like the 
men who made the agreements, he had placed his faith in the 
sanctity of treaties. But as he explained to the Americari dele- 

n Memorandum for the Secretary of State, January 23, 1945. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 601 

gates to San Francisco, in a meeting on April 17, he had had 
to learn of these errors at firsthand. "I pointed out that as 
Governor in 1928 it had been my unhappy position to go over 
the plans for the defense of Corregidor and to realize that the 
brave men on that island were deliberately being left there to 
a glorious but hopeless defense of the island. . . . We . . . 
shackled ourselves and placed our reliance upon treaties which 
the Japanese promptly broke, and I earnestly begged them 
[the delegates] never again to repeat that error. I then told 
them how in 1941 I was in office again and in the position 
where I could see the errors which I had pointed out ripen 
into their inevitable disaster. I stood in Washington helpless 
to reinforce and defend the Philippines and had to simply 
watch their glorious but hopeless defense. I said that I believed 
that we could under proper conditions introduce the trustee 
system even into these bases, but it must give us full control 
and full strategic rights for the protection of them." So long 
as the United States retained its vital interest in the western 
Pacific, and so long as American strength was the principal 
safeguard against aggression in that area, that strength must 
not be hamstrung by unconsidered idealism. The policemen 
must be armed. 

A curious aspect of the debate within the Government was 
that no one seemed to deny that American interests in the 
islands under discussion must be protected. President Roose- 
velt was "just as keen as anybody else to take the full power 
of arming them and using them to protect the peace and our- 
selves during any war that may come, and for that reason his 
people at San Francisco will be trying to form a definition of 
trusteeships or mandates which will permit that to be done." 
(Diary, March 18, 1945) The difficulty with this approach, 
as Stimson saw it, was that it camouflaged the realities of the 
situation. "The State Department proposals were meticulously 
building up a world organization which was to be the trustee 
and were proposing that we should turn over these bases to 
this trustee and then take back the management of them and 
try to make the powers of management big enough to give us 
the power which we now hold from our efforts in the war." 
(Diary, March 30, 1945) Such a procedure seemed to Stim- 



602 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

son pointlessly roundabout. He would have preferred to state 
plainly that the defense of strategic islands was essential to 
the United States and a definite advantage to all Pacific 
powers. "With that attitude properly demonstrated I feel sure 
that we could have met with no objection to retaining enough 
bases to secure our position in the Pacific. My point was that 
we had always stood for freedom and peace in the Pacific and 
we had waged this war to throw out an aggressor and to restore 
peace and freedom and everybody knew it; that these bases 
had been stolen by the aggressor, who had used them to attack 
us and destroy our power; that we had fought this war with 
much cost of life and treasure to capture these bases and to 
free from the threat of aggression all of the peace-loving 
nations of the Pacific. We had actually thus saved from threat 
Australia and the Philippines and we were engaged in the 
process of doing it to the East Indies and to China ; that if we 
had called attention to all of this and then said that we pro- 
posed to hold the bases which we now had gained in this pain- 
ful struggle as a means and for the purpose of protecting 
freedom and peace in the Pacific, no one would have objected. 
In other words, we should have announced our possession with 
a declaration of trust in which all peace-loving nations were 
the beneficiaries." (Diary, March 30, 1945) 

The intragovernmental differences on trusteeships were 
safely resolved before the San Francisco Conference. It was 
agreed that no particular territories should be discussed, and 
in return the War and Navy Departments agreed that it would 
be practicable to devise a trusteeship system which would pro- 
vide for the maintenance of United States military and stra- 
tegic rights in the Pacific and elsewhere. As finally signed, the 
United Nations Charter contained only a general framework 
for the handling of trust territories; specific agreements on 
specific areas were left for later negotiation. In 1947 an agree- 
ment was signed which adequately safeguarded the American 
interest. 

The real issue in the trusteeship question was one of atti- 
tude; both sides in the Government wanted the same results. 
They differed about the way of getting it. This same difference 
persisted in the much larger question of securing a successful 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 603 

peace settlement. However attractive it might be to think in 
terms of a world organization, the real guarantee of peace 
could only come from agreement among the major powers, 
and such agreement would be much more readily achieved 
if attention were not diverted from it to blueprints which must 
remain without effect unless guaranteed by the three great 
nations. On January 23, in a memorandum to Secretary Stet- 
tinius, Stimson explained this view in some detail. 

"i. The Moscow Conference of November i, 1943, contem- 
plated two organizations: (a) 'A General International Or- 
ganization based on the principle of the sovereign equality of 
all peace-loving states and open to membership by all such 
states, large and small' etc. (b) An interim consultative or- 
ganization of the four large powers for 'maintaining inter- 
national peace and security pending the re-establishment of 
law and order and the inauguration of a system of general 
security.' 

"2. This recognized the self-evident fact that these large 
powers who have won the war for law and justice will be 
obliged to maintain the security of the world which they have 
saved during the time necessary to establish a permanent or- 
ganization of the whole world, and for that purpose they will 
have to consult and decide on many questions necessary to the 
security of the world and primarily their own safety in estab- 
lishing that security. I have always thought that this interim 
organization should be formal, subject to rules of consultation 
similar to Article XI of the old League, and actively at work 
until the world had gotten stabilized enough to establish and 
turn loose the large world organization which includes the 
small nations. 

"3. The job of the four big nations is principally to establish 
a guarantee of peace in the atmosphere of which the world 
organization can be set going. 

"This will necessarily include the settlement of all terri- 
torial acquisitions in the shape of defense posts which each of 
these four powers may deem to be necessary for their own 
safety in carrying out such a guarantee of world peace. 

"4. For substantially this purpose, at the end of the last war 
President Wilson proposed a joint covenant of guarantee by 



604 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Britain and America of the security of France as the pillar 
of western Europe. But the mistake was made of not securing 
that guarantee before the second step of creating the League 
of Nations whose safety was in large part to be dependent upon 
such a guarantee. As a result the League of Nations lacked a 
foundation of security which ultimately proved fatal to it. 

"5. I think we are in danger of making a similar mistake by 
attempting to formulate the Dumbarton organization before 
we have discussed and ironed out the realities which may exist 
to enable the four powers to carry out their mission, and I was 
much interested to read Senator Vandenberg's recent speech 
[of January 10, 1945] in which he took practically the same 
ground. 

"6. Any attempt to finally organize a Dumbarton organiza- 
tion will necessarily take place in an atmosphere of unreality 
until these preliminary foundations are established. The atti- 
tude of the numerous minor nations who have no real responsi- 
bility but plenty of vocal power and logical arguments will 
necessarily be different from that of the large powers who 
have to furnish the real security. . . ." 

The memorandum continued with specific references to the 
trusteeship problem, and then with a passage pointing out that 
Russian ideas and interests must also be considered. "She will 
claim that, in the light of her bitter experience with Germany, 
her own self-defense as a guarantor of the peace of the world 
will depend on relations with buffer countries like Poland, 
Bulgaria, and Rumania, which will be quite different from 
complete independence on the part of those countries." 

And then Stimson re-emphasized his main point 

"For all these reasons I think we should not put the cart 
before the horse. We should by thorough discussion between 
the three or four great powers endeavor to settle, so far as we 
can, an accord upon the general area of these fundamental 
problems. We should endeavor to secure a covenant of guaran- 
tee of peace or at least an understanding of the conditions upon 
which such a general undertaking of mutual guarantee could 
be based. 

"If there is a general understanding reached among the 
larger powers I do not fear any lack of enthusiasm on the part 



'FHE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 605 

of the lesser fry to follow through with the world organization 
whenever a general meeting may be called. 

"The foregoing constitutes a consideration which I believe 
to be fundamental yet it is no more than the common prudence 
one would exercise in preparing for the success of any general 
assembly or meeting in business or political life." 

This insistence on the vital importance of achieving big- 
power agreement before entrusting the peace to an infant 
organization remained throughout 1945 and even afterward a 
cardinal point in Stimson's attitude toward world affairs. He 
believed that in general it was shared by President Roosevelt, 
although perhaps the President was less fearful than Stimson 
of the effects of too early a start with the United Nations 
Organization. Certainly this principle lay behind the Presi- 
dent's constant and devoted effort to establish enduring friend- 
ship with Soviet Russia. And equally certainly the main 
block to Stimson's policy, as to the world of the United Nations 
later, lay in the peculiar difficulty of dealing with the Rus- 
sians. 

7. THE EMERGENT RUSSIAN PROBLEM 

During the war two facts became quite apparent to Stimson 
from the American Army's dealings with Russia. One was 
that the Russians were, consciously or unconsciously, bad- 
mannered and irritating beyond the normal degree of per- 
missible international effrontery. Trustfulness and courtesy 
in whatever quantity seemed to inspire little if any reciprocity 
in official dealings, however merry the receptions, dinners, and 
vodka parties. The balance of effort was strikingly illustrated 
when President Roosevelt hastened his death by traveling to 
the Crimea in order to meet with Stalin, who reported himself 
forbidden by his doctor to make a long voyage. 

The second evident fact about Soviet Russia was her 
strength. The colossal achievement of the Soviet armies and 
the skill and energy of the Russian leaders were perfectly 
apparent to men like Stimson and Marshall who had spent 
many anxious hours in contemplation of the awful task of 
beating Nazi Germany if the Russians should go under. A 
nation which could do what the Russians did, after suffering 



6o6 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

the losses and the devastation inflicted by the invader in the 
first eighteen months of his attack, was a nation of whose 
strength and heart there could be no serious question. 

Neither of these two facts particularly disturbed Stimson, 
for he was used to international bad manners, and he saw no 
reason for the United States to be upset by the fact of Russian 
strength. Diplomatic reports of 1943 and early 1944 gave 
reason to hope that in the future as in the past Russians and 
Americans could pursue their respective policies without 
clashing. Stimson was not disposed to contest the Russian 
claim that there must be no anti-Russian states along the 
Soviet borders, and pending their disproof he chose to accept 
as hopeful signs the constant Soviet assertions that the in- 
dependence and integrity of states like Poland were a funda- 
mental principle of Russian foreign policy. 

Only one aspect of Soviet Russia gave him any deep 
concern. This was the absence of individual political freedom. 
The historic danger of authoritarian government, not only 
to its own citizens but also in any major power to other peoples 
as well, was a subject with which he was painfully familiar, 
and in the iron dictatorship of Russia he saw the greatest 
single threat to an effective postwar settlement. Still more 
disturbing was evidence that the secret police followed the 
flag and operated wherever the Russian Army penetrated. 
"Averell Harriman [then United States Ambassador to 
Russia] came in this morning and ... as I listened to his 
account about the way in which the Russians were trying 
to dominate the countries which they are 'liberating' and the 
use which they are making of secret police in the process, 
my mind was cleared up a good deal on the necessity of 
beginning a campaign of education on the problem of the 
secret police in the postwar world. It very evidently is a 
problem upon the proper solution of which the success of our 
relations with Russia ultimately will largely depend. Free- 
dom cannot exist in countries where the government uses a 
secret police to dominate its citizens, and there is nothing 
to choose between the Gestapo which the Germans have used 
and the OGPU which the Russians have historically used. 
Stalin recently promised his people a constitution with a bill 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 607 

of rights like our own, but he has not yet put it into execution. 
It seems to me now that . . . getting him to carry out this 
promised reform, which will necessarily mean the aboli- 
tion of the secret police, lies at the foundation of our success. 
Harriman says that it will be practically impossible to get the 
Russians to do it for themselves just at present but that we 
ought certainly to prevent them from introducing [the secret 
police] into the countries which they are now invading, par- 
ticularly Hungary. Hungary has not a Slavic population and I 
do not believe would willingly accept the methods of the 
OGPU. We should not allow them to be driven by the Russians 
into doing it. ... The two agencies by which liberty and free- 
dom have been destroyed in nations which grant too much 
power to their government now seem to me clearly to be (i) 
the control of the press and (2) the control of the liberty of 
the citizens through the secret police. The latter is the most 
abhorrent of the two." (Diary, October 23, 1944) 

Although the question of freedom in Russia and freedom in 
nations surrounding her seemed steadily more significant to 
Stimson in the months that followed, he continued to believe 
that Mr. Roosevelt was wholly correct in trying to handle 
the postwar settlement on the basis of Big Three agreement. 
There seemed to him no doubt that such agreement was the 
essential prerequisite to true stability in the peace settlement, 
and he looked with favor on the President's method of direct 
bargaining. Hearing about Yalta from Stettinius, the new 
Secretary of State, Stimson was particularly pleased by "the 
increase in cordiality that has appeared between Stalin and 
the rest of us. This is lucky because we will need it. There are 
so many sources of friction between the three great nations 
now that there are liberated countries for them all to wiggle 
around in and rub up against each other." (Diary, March 13, 
1945) 

But in March and April, 1945, a series of episodes showed 
both Stalin's good humor and Russian "bad manners" in a 
striking light. None of these incidents was important in itself 
but messages arrived during each of them indicating "a spirit 
in Russia which bodes evil in the coming difficulties of the 
postwar scene." (Diary, March 17, 1945) First, the Russians 



608 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

showed suspicion and mistrust over Anglo-American negotia- 
tions for the surrender of the German forces in northern 
Italy. To Stimson it appeared that this as a strictly military 
surrender was a matter in which Russia had no more business 
than the United States would have had at Stalingrad, and 
President Roosevelt strongly agreed, but there was some dis- 
agreement in Anglo- American circles, Mr. Churchill partic- 
ularly preferring to lean over backwards in correctness. The 
matter was finally settled on a compromise basis, but the tone 
and feeling on both sides were sharp. A similar sharpness 
developed in negotiations over prisoners, both Americans in 
the Russian lines and persons from Russian or Russian- 
occupied territory in American hands. Although there seemed 
to be little doubt that the ordinary Russian soldier and officer 
were friendly to liberated Americans, official obstructionism to 
American efforts to care for Americans was extremely irritat- 
ing and finally led to a sharp telegram from the President to 
Stalin. At the same time the Russians indicated a keen interest 
in the "repatriation" of many men in American hands who 
showed no desire whatever to be handed over to Russian 
control, and the Americans were faced with the unpleasant 
alternative of offending a great ally or abandoning the great 
principle of political asylum. 

In all these lesser matters Stimson was in favor of firmness. 
For a long time he had felt that the Americans tended to give 
way too easily on these smaller questions, leaving the Russians 
with the impression that they had only to be disagreeable 
to get what they wanted. Small-minded haggling was no part 
of Mr. Roosevelt's nature, and in the larger sense this was most 
fortunate, but it left lesser officials at a considerable disad- 
vantage in trying to make co-operation mutual. This difficulty 
was by no means peculiar to dealings with the Russians, but 
there was a discernible tendency among the Russians to build 
their whole policy on the other fellow's good nature, and 
Stimson thought that toleration of such nonsense was foolish 
he inclined to believe that Stalin was the sort of man with 
whom it was useful to speak bluntly. 

Stimson, however, did not share the attitude of general 
impatience which came over the administration in the last 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 609 

weeks of President Roosevelt's life and in the early days of 
the Truman administration. Perhaps because he had not been 
closely connected with any of the negotiations with Russia, 
he did not feel the personal pique at unkept agreements and 
efforts to overreach which affected the thinking of so many 
who had dealings with the Soviets. Shortly after Mr. Roose- 
velt died it appeared that on two matters at least he had in his 
last weeks wholly lost sympathy with the Russians and had 
begun to follow a somewhat altered, 'firmer, 7 American 
policy. The failure of the Russians to carry out the Yalta 
provisions for a genuinely reconstructed Polish government 
and the aggressive attitude of the Yugoslavs toward Trieste 
had struck Mr. Roosevelt as wholly unjustified and deeply 
disquieting; he had outlined policies designed to make clear 
American disapproval of the Lublin Polish government and 
American opposition to any Yugoslav coup in Trieste. Both 
of these policies were inherited by Mr. Truman, and both 
soon came before his advisers. In a meeting on April 23 the 
question of Poland was discussed and the general sentiment 
was strongly in favor of vigorous protest against the Soviet 
failure to keep the Yalta agreement. Stimson's own reaction 
was different; although he admitted that he was not fully 
informed, he was very doubtful about the wisdom of too 
'strong' a policy. "So I ... told the President that I was very 
much troubled by it. ... I said that in my opinion we ought 
to be very careful and see whether we couldn't get ironed 
out on the situation without getting into a head-on collision. . . . 
I ... pointed out that I believed in firmness on the minor 
matters where we had been yielding in the past and have said 
so frequently, but I said that this [Polish problem] was too 
big a question to take chances on; and so it went on. . . ." 

On the question of Trieste Stimson took a similar position. 
The core of his feeling here was that the Balkans and their 
troubles were beyond the sphere of proper United States 
action. This had been the American position throughout the 
war, and he saw no reason for any present change, although he 

6 This view Stimson revised in 1947; by then the whole international situation had 
so changed that the Balkans were very much a United States problem ; no longer able 
to limit their participation to traditional areas, the Americans had inherited a new 
responsibility from- a weakened Great Britain. 



6 io ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

relished as little as anyone else the proposal of Yugoslavian 
domination of Trieste. Fortunately it proved possible to take 
and hold Trieste without any important clash of arms. 

Occurring as they did during the period of the San Fran- 
cisco Conference, which was drawing up a charter for the 
permanent organization of the United Nations, such incidents 
as these were extremely unpleasant. To Stimson they seemed 
a further confirmation of his long-held belief that basic agree- 
ment among the major powers should be achieved before any 
new world organization was set up. Contemplating the em- 
barrassment of the State Department as it faced the problem 
of excluding the Lublin government from San Francisco, to- 
gether with the possibility that this exclusion might seriously 
damage Russo-American relations, he wrote in his diary: 
"Contrary to what I thought was the wise course, they have 
not settled the problems that lie between the United States 
and Russia and Great Britain and France, the main powers, 
by wise negotiations before this public meeting in San Fran- 
cisco, but they have gone ahead and called this great public 
meeting of all the United Nations, and they have got public 
opinion all churned up over it and now they feel compelled 
to bull the thing through. Why, to me, it seems that they might 
make trouble between us and Russia in comparison with 
which the whole possibilities of the San Francisco meeting 
amount to nothing. ... I have very grave anxiety as a result 
since then as to what will happen. I am very sorry for the 
President because he is new on his job and he has been brought 
into a situation which ought not to have been allowed to come 
in this way." (Diary, April 23, 1945) 

And a further difficulty was that in those cases in which 
there had been prior negotiations, the American negotiator had 
not been sufficiently hard-boiled. "I think the meeting at 
Yalta was primarily responsible for it because it dealt a good 
deal in altruism and idealism instead of stark realities on which 
Russia is strong and now they have got tied up in this mess." 
And again: "Although at Yalta she [Russia] apparently agreed 
to a free and independent ballot for the ultimate choice of the 
representatives of Poland, yet I know very well from my 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PEACE 611 

experience with other nations that there are no nations 7 in the 
world except the U. S. and the U. K. which have a real idea 
of what an independent free ballot is.' 7 (Diary, April 23, 

1945) 

Stimson's own notion of the proper general policy was to 
reverse these two earlier tendencies : first, to aim at agreement 
between the major powers before placing any emphasis on the 
United Nations as a whole, and second, to negotiate carefully 
and in good temper, on facts and not theories, with the 
difficult Russians. "It seems to me that it is a time for me to 
use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been 
apparently getting a little more irritated. I have myself been 
in the various crises enough to feel the importance of firm 
dealing with the Russians but . . . what we want is to state 
our facts with perfectly cold-blooded firmness and not show 
any temper. 77 (Diary, April 3, 1945) 

This remained Stimson 7 s attitude throughout the spring 
of 1945. But as the days passed, a new and important element 
entered into his thinking about Russia, and by midsummer it 
had become almost dominant, dwarfing lesser aspects of the 
problem. 



7 The phrase "no nations" was an evident exaggeration. Stimson had no intention 
of excluding the democracies of western Europe, for example, from his list of nations 
that understood the free ballot. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Atomic Bomb and the 
Surrender of Japan 



. I. MAKING A BOMB 

ON AUGUST 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped by 
an American Army airplane on the Japanese city of 
Hiroshima. There was thus awfully announced to the world 
man's mastery of a force vastly more deadly, and potentially 
more beneficial too, than any other in human history. In the 
months that followed, as Americans considered in mingled 
pride and fear the extraordinary achievement of the free 
world's scientists in combination with American engineers and 
industry, there was much discussion of the Hiroshima attack. 
As one of those largely concerned in this decision, Stimson at 
length concluded that it would be useful "to record for all 
who may be interested my understanding of the events which 
led up to the attack." The paper which he published in Febru- 
ary, 1947, in Harper's Magazine, contains a careful record of 
his personal connection with this issue to which only occasional 
comments need be added. 

"It was in the fall of 1941 that the question of atomic energy 
was first brought directly to my attention. At that time Presi- 
dent Roosevelt appointed a committee consisting of Vice 
President Wallace, General Marshall, Dr. Vannevar Bush, 
Dr. James B. Conant, and myself. The function of this com- 
mittee was to advise the President on questions of policy relat- 
ing to the study of nuclear fission which was then proceeding 
both in this country and in Great Britain. For nearly four years 
thereafter I was directly connected with all major decisions of 
policy on the development and use of atomic energy, and from 

612 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 613 

May i, 1943, until my resignation as Secretary of War on 
September 21, 1945, 1 was directly responsible to the President 
for the administration of the entire undertaking; my chief 
advisers in this period were General Marshall, Dr. Bush, Dr. 
Conant, and Major General Leslie R. Groves, the officer in 
charge of the project. At the same time I was the President's 
senior adviser on the military employment of atomic energy. 
"The policy adopted and steadily pursued by President 
Roosevelt and his advisers was a simple one. It was to spare no 
effort in securing the earliest possible successful development 
of an atomic weapon. The reasons for this policy were equally 
simple. The original experimental achievement of atomic 
fission had occurred in Germany in 1938, and it was known 
that the Germans had continued their experiments. In 1941' and 
1942 they were believed to be ahead of us, and it was vital that 
they should not be the first to bring atomic weapons into the 
field of battle. Furthermore, if we should be the first to develop 
the weapon, we should have a great new instrument for short- 
ening the war and minimizing destruction. At no time, from 
1941 to 1945, did I ever hear it suggested by the President, 
or by any other responsible member of the government, that , 
atomic energy should not be used in the war. All of us of course 
understood the terrible responsibility involved in our attempt 
to unlock the doors to such a devastating weapon; President 
Roosevelt particularly spoke to me many times of his own 
awareness of the catastrophic potentialities of our work. But we 
were at war, and the work must be done. I therefore emphasize 
that it was our common objective, throughout the war, to be the 
first to produce an atomic weapon and use it. The possible 
atomic weapon was considered to be a new and tremendously 
powerful explosive, as legitimate as any other of the deadly 
explosive weapons of modern war. The entire purpose was the 
production of a military weapon; on no other ground could 
the wartime expenditure of so much time and money have 
been justified. The exact circumstances in which that weapon 
might be used were unknown to any of us until the middle of 
1945, and when that time came, as we shall presently see, the 
military use of atomic energy was connected with larger 
questions of national policy." 



614 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

During these years, from 1941 to 1945, the atomic project 
occupied a gradually increasing proportion of Stimson's time. 
In addition to his duties in general supervision of the brilliant 
work of General Groves, he became chairman of a Combined 
Policy Committee, composed of British and American officials 
and responsible directly to the President and Prime Minister 
Churchill. The atomic undertaking was not solely American, 
although the managerial direction was exercised through 
American leaders working mainly with American resources, 
It was rather another and conspicuous example of co-operation 
between the United States and the British Commonwealth, in 
this instance represented by Great Britain and Canada, the 
latter being a critically important source of the necessary raw 
materials. In all these matters Stimson's direct agent was 
Bundy, who maintained constant contact with the work of 
General Groves and served as American secretary of the Com- 
bined Policy Committee. 

A further responsibility faced by Stimson and his associates 
was that of securing the necessary appropriations from Con- 
gress. Until 1944 work on the atom was financed from funds 
elastically available from other appropriations, but as the 
expenditure increased, and the size of the gamble too, it was 
decided that direct appropriation would be necessary and that 
congressional leaders should be informed. Accordingly, in 
February, 1944, Stimson, Marshall, and Bush made their case 
before Speaker Rayburn and the two party leaders of the 
House of Representatives, Congressmen McCormack and 
Martin. With great courage and co-operation these leaders 
piloted the necessary appropriation through the House with- 
out public discussion. A meeting in June with Senators Bark- 
ley, White, Bridges, and Thomas of Oklahoma produced 
similar results in the Senate. Again in 1945 further large ap- 
propriations were obtained in the same manner. Although one 
or two members of Congress desired to investigate the enor- 
mous construction work in Tennessee and Washington, they 
were successfully held off, sometimes by their own colleagues 
and at least once by Stimson's direct refusal to permit such 
investigation. Similar difficulties were surmounted in arrang- 
ing for Treasury handling of atomic funds and forestalling 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 615 

antitrust action against the Du Pont Company, whose execu- 
tives must not be disturbed in their great labors for the con- 
struction of plants at Clinton and Hanford for a profit of one 
dollar. 

"As time went on it became clear that the weapon would 
not be available in time for use in the European theater, and 
the war against Germany was successfully ended by the use of 
what are now called conventional means. But in the spring of 
1945 it became evident that the climax of our prolonged 
atomic effort was at hand. By the nature of atomic chain reac- 
tions, it was impossible to state with certainty that we had suc- 
ceeded until a bomb had actually exploded in a full-scale 
experiment; nevertheless it was considered exceedingly prob- 
able that we should by midsummer have successfully detonated 
the first atomic bomb. This was to be done at the Alamogordo 
Reservation in New Mexico. It was thus time for detailed 
consideration of our future plans. What had begun as a well- 
founded hope was now developing into a reality. 

"On March 15, 1945, I had my last talk with President 
Roosevelt. My diary record of this conversation gives a fairly 
clear picture of the state of our thinking at that time. I have 
removed the name of the distinguished public servant who was 
fearful lest the Manhattan (atomic) project 'be a lemon'; it 
was an opinion common among those not fully informed. 

" The President . . . had suggested that I come over to 
lunch today. ... First I took up with him a memorandum 

which he sent to me from who had been alarmed at the 

rumors of extravagance in the Manhattan project. sug- 
gested that it might become disastrous and he suggested that we 
get a body of 'outside' scientists to pass upon the project because 
rumors are going around that Vannevar Bush and Jim Conant 
have sold the President a lemon on the subject and ought to be 
checked up on. It was rather a jittery and nervous memoran- 
dum and rather silly, and I was prepared for it and I gave 
the President a list of the scientists who were actually engaged 
on it to show the very high standing of them and it comprised 
four Nobel Prize men, and also how practically every physicist 
of standing was engaged with us in the project. Then I out- 
lined to him the future of it and when it was likely to come off 



616 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and told him how important it was to get ready. I went over 
with him the two schools of thought that exist in respect to the 
future control after the war of this project, in case it is success- 
ful, one of them being the secret close-in attempted control of 
the project by those who control it now, and the other being 
the international control based upon freedom both of science 
and of access. I told him that those things must be settled before 
the first projectile is used and that he must be ready with a 
statement to come out to the people on it just as soon as that is 
done. He agreed to that. . . .' 

"This conversation covered the three aspects of the question 
which were then uppermost in our minds. First, it was always 
necessary to suppress a lingering doubt that any such titanic 
undertaking could be successful. Second, we must consider 
the implications of success in terms of its long-range postwar 
effect. Third, we must face the problem that would be pre- 
sented at the time of our first use of the weapon, for with that 
first use there must be some public statement." 

In order to insure careful consideration of the extraordinary 
problems now presented, Stimson set up in April a committee 
"charged with the function of advising the President on the 
various questions raised by our apparently imminent success 
in developing an atomic weapon." This committee, known as 
the Interim Committee, 1 held discussions which "ranged over 
the whole field of atomic energy, in its political, military, and 
scientific aspects. . . . The committee's work included the 
drafting of the statements which were published immediately 
after the first bombs were dropped, the drafting of a bill for 
the domestic control of atomic energy, and recommendations 
looking toward the international control of atomic energy." 

1 "I was its chairman, but the principal labor of guiding its extended deliberations 
fell to George L. Harrison, who acted as chairman in my absence. ... Its members 
were the following, in addition to Mr. Harrison and myself: tf 

"James F. Byrnes (then a private citizen) as personal representative of the 
President. 

"Ralph A. Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy. 

"William L. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State. 

"Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director, Office of Scientific Research and Development, and 
president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 

"Dr. Karl T. Compton, Chief of the Office of Field Service in the Office of Scientific 
Research and Development, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

"Dr. James B. Conant, Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, and 
president of Harvard University." 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 617 

But the first and greatest problem was the decision on the 
use of the bomb should it be used against the Japanese, and 
if so, in what manner? 

The Interim Committee, on June i, recommended that 
the bomb should be used against Japan, without specific warn- 
ing, as soon as possible, and against such a target as to make 
clear its devastating strength. Any other course, in the opinion 
of the committee, involved serious danger to the major objec- 
tive of obtaining a prompt surrender from the Japanese. An 
advisory panel of distinguished atomic physicists reported 
that "We can propose no technical demonstration likely to 
bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to 
direct military use." 

"The committee's function was, of course, entirely advisory. 
The ultimate responsibility for the recommendation to the 
President rested upon me, and I have no desire to veil it. The 
conclusions of the committee were similar to my own, although 
I reached mine independently. I felt that to extract a genuine 
surrender from the Emperor and his military advisers, there 
must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry 
convincing proof of our power to destroy the Empire. Such an 
effective shock would save many times the number of lives, 
both American and Japanese, that it would cost 

"The facts upon which my reasoning was based and steps 
taken to carry it out now follow." The argument which fol- 
lows represents the opinion held not only by Stimson but by 
all his senior military advisers. General Marshall particularly 
was emphatic in his insistence on the shock value of the new 
weapon. 

2. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SURRENDER 

"The principal political, social, and military objective of 
the United States in the summer of 1945 was the prompt and 
complete surrender of Japan. Only the complete destruc- 
tion of her military power could open the way to lasting 
peace. 

"Japan, in July, 1945, had been seriously weakened by 
our increasingly violent attacks. It was known to us that she 
had gone so far as to make tentative proposals to the Soviet 



6i8 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

Government, hoping to use the Russians as mediators in a 
negotiated peace. These vague proposals contemplated the 
retention by Japan of important conquered areas and were 
therefore not considered seriously. There was as yet no indi- 
cation of any weakening in the Japanese determination to fight 
rather than accept unconditional surrender. If she should 
persist in her fight to the end, she had still a great military 
force. 

"In the middle of July, 1945, the intelligence section of the 
War Department General Staff estimated Japanese military 
strength as follows: in the home islands, slightly under 2,000,- 
ooo ; in Korea, Manchuria, China proper, and Formosa, 
slightly over 2,000,000; in French Indo-China, Thailand, and 
Burma, over 200,000; in the East Indies area, including the 
Philippines, over 500,000; in the by-passed Pacific islands, over 
100,000. The total strength of the Japanese Army was esti- 
mated at about 5,000,000 men. These estimates later proved 
to be in very close agreement with official Japanese figures. 

"The Japanese Army was in much better condition than 
the Japanese Navy and Air Force. The Navy had practically 
ceased to exist except as a harrying force against an invasion 
fleet. The Air Force had been reduced mainly to reliance 
upon Kamikaze, or suicide, attacks. These latter, however, 
had already inflicted serious damage on our seagoing forces, 
and their possible effectiveness in a last ditch fight was a 
matter of real concern to our naval leaders. 

"As we understood it in July, there was a very strong possi- 
bility that the Japanese Government might determine upon 
resistance to the end, in all the areas of the Far East under 
its control. In such an event the Allies would be faced with 
the enormous task of destroying an armed force of five million 
men and five thousand suicide aircraft, belonging to a race 
which had already amply demonstrated its ability to fight liter- 
ally to the death. 

"The strategic plans of our armed forces for the defeat of 
Japan, as they stood in July, had been prepared without 
reliance upon the atomic bomb, which had not yet been tested 
in New Mexico. We were planning an intensified sea and air 
blockade, and greatly intensified strategic air bombing, 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 619 

through the summer and early fall, to be followed on Novem- 
ber i by an invasion of the southern island of Kyushu. This 
would be followed in turn by an invasion of the main island 
of Honshu in the spring of 1946. The total U. S. military and 
naval force involved in this grand design was of the order of 
5,000,000 men; if all those indirectly concerned are included, 
it was larger still." 

(These plans did not bear any significant impress from 
Stimson, who was never directly concerned in the handling of 
Pacific strategy. In his view, however, they were wholly sound ; 
he had been throughout 1944, and early 1945 an opponent of 
the contrary plan for a preliminary invasion of China, holding 
in the Pacific to the same general theory of the straight and 
heavy blow, with no diversions, which he had advocated for 
the European war.) 

"We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this plan 
to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the 
latter part of 1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such 
operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties, 
to American forces alone. Additional large losses might be 
expected among our allies and, of course, if our campaign were 
successful and if we could judge by previous experience, enemy 
casualties would be much larger than our own. 

"It was already clear in July that even before the invasion 
we should be able to inflict enormously severe damage on the 
Japanese homeland by the combined application of 'conven- 
tional 7 sea and air power. The critical question was whether 
this kind of action would induce surrender. It therefore be- 
came necessary to consider very carefully the probable state 
of mind of the enemy, and to assess with accuracy the line of 
conduct which might end his will to resist. 

"With these considerations in mind, I wrote a memorandum 
for the President, on July 2, which I believe fairly represents 
the thinking of the American Government as it finally took 
shape in action. This memorandum was prepared after dis- 
cussion and general agreement with Joseph C. Grew, Acting 
Secretary of State, and Secretary of the Navy Forrestal, and 
when I discussed it with the President, he expressed his general 
approval." 



620 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

This memorandum was originally prompted not by the 
problem of atomic energy but by the American desire to 
achieve a Japanese surrender without invading the home 
islands. The distinction is an important one, -and Stimson 
thought it worth noting that the germ of the memorandum, 
from which the Potsdam ultimatum later developed, was in a 
meeting at the White House on June 18 at which final plans 
for the invasion of Japan were approved. The inclusion of 
civilian advisers at this meeting was a return to the procedure 
which Franklin Roosevelt had abandoned in 1942, and the 
presence of Stimson and McCloy, combined with President 
Truman's insistent desire to be sure that there was no alterna- 
tive to invasion, was the beginning of the political actions 
which so greatly assisted in obtaining surrender. 



"July 2, 1945 
"Memorandum for the President. 

PROPOSED PROGRAM FOR JAPAN 

"i. The plans of operation up to and including the first 
landing have been authorized and the preparations for the 
operation are now actually going on. This situation was ac- 
cepted by all members of your conference on Monday, June 18. 

"2. There is reason to believe that the operation for the 
occupation of Japan following the landing may be a very long, 
costly, and arduous struggle on our part. The terrain, much 
of which I have visited several times, has left the impression 
on my memory of being one which would be susceptible to a 
last ditch defense such as has been made on Iwo Jima and 
Okinawa and which of course is very much larger than either 
of those two areas. According to my recollection it will be 
much more unfavorable with regard to tank maneuvering 
than either the Philippines or Germany. 

"3. If we once land on one of the main islands and begin 
a forceful occupation of Japan, we shall probably have cast 
the die of last ditch resistance. The Japanese are highly patri- 
otic and certainly susceptible to calls for fanatical resistance 
to repel an invasion. Once started in actual invasion, we shall 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 621 

in my opinion have to go through with an even more bitter 
finish fight than in Germany. We shall incur the losses incident 
to such a war and we shall have to leave the Japanese islands 
even more thoroughly destroyed than was the case with Ger- 
many. This would be due both to the difference in the Jap- 
anese and German personal character and the differences in 
the size and character of the terrain through which the opera- 
tions will take place. 

"4. A question then comes : Is there any alternative to such 
a forceful occupation of Japan which will secure for us the 
equivalent of an unconditional surrender of her forces and a 
permanent destruction of her power again to strike an aggres- 
sive blow at the 'peace of the Pacific'? I am inclined to think 
that there is enough such chance to make it well worth while 
our giving them a warning of what is to come and definite 
opportunity to capitulate. As above suggested, it should be 
tried before the actual forceful occupation of the homeland 
islands is begun and furthermore the warning should be given 
in ample time to permit a national reaction to set in. 

"We have the following enormously favorable factors on 
our side factors much weightier than those we had against 
Germany : 

"Japan has no allies. 

"Her navy is nearly destroyed and she is vulnerable to 
a surface and underwater blockade which can deprive her of 
sufficient food and supplies for her population. 

"She is terribly vulnerable to our concentrated air attack 
upon her crowded cities, industrial and food resources. 

"She has against her not only the Anglo-American forces 
but the rising forces of China and the ominous threat of Russia. 

"We have inexhaustible and untouched industrial re- 
sources to bring to bear against her diminishing potential. 

"We have great moral superiority through being the 
victim of her first sneak attack. 

"The problem is to translate these advantages into prompt 
and economical achievement of our objectives. I believe Japan 
is susceptible to reason in such a crisis to a much greater extent 
than is indicated by our current press and other current com- 
ment. Japan is not a nation composed wholly of mad fanatics 



622 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

of an entirely different mentality from ours. On the contrary, 
she has within the past century shown herself to possess ex- 
tremely intelligent people, capable in an unprecedentedly short 
time of adopting not only the complicated technique of Occi- 
dental civilization but to a substantial extent their culture and 
their political and social ideas. Her advance in all these 
respects during the short period of sixty or seventy years has 
been one of the most astounding feats of national progress in 
history a leap from the isolated feudalism of centuries into 
the position of one of six or seven great powers of the world. 
She has not only built up powerful armies and navies. She 
has maintained an honest and effective national finance and 
respected position in many of the sciences in which we pride 
ourselves. Prior to the forcible seizure of power over her 
government by the fanatical military group in 1931, she had 
for ten years lived a reasonably responsible and respectable 
international life. 

"My own opinion is in her favor on the two points involved 
in this question: 

"a. I think the Japanese nation has the mental intelli- 
gence and versatile capacity in such a crisis to recognize the 
folly of a fight to the finish and to accept the proffer of what 
will amount to an unconditional surrender; and 

"b. I think she has within her population enough liberal 
leaders (although now submerged by the terrorists) to be 
depended upon for her reconstruction as a responsible member 
of the family of nations. I think she is better in this last respect 
than Germany was. Her liberals yielded only at the point of 
the pistol and, so far as I am aware, their liberal attitude has 
not been personally subverted in the way which was so general 
in Germany. 

"On the other hand, I think that the attempt to exterminate 
her armies and her population by gunfire or other means will 
tend to produce a fusion of race solidity and antipathy which 
has no analogy in the case of Germany. We have a national 
interest in creating, if possible, a condition wherein the Jap- 
anese nation may live as a peaceful and useful member of the 
future Pacific community. 

"5. It is therefore my conclusion that a carefully timed 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 623 

warning be given to Japan by the chief representatives of the 
United States, Great Britain, China, and, if then a belligerent, 
Russia, by calling upon Japan to surrender and permit the 
occupation of her country in order to insure its complete de- 
militarization for the sake of the future peace. 

"This warning should contain the following elements : 

"The varied and overwhelming character of the force 
we are about to bring to bear on the islands. 

"The inevitability and completeness of the destruction 
which the full application of this force will entail. 

"The determination of the Allies to destroy permanently 
all authority and influence of those who have deceived and 
misled the country into embarking on world conquest. 

"The determination of the Allies to limit Japanese 
sovereignty to her main islands and to render them powerless 
to mount and support another war. 

"The disavowal of any attempt to extirpate the Japanese 
as a race or to destroy them as a nation. 

"A statement of our readiness, once her economy is 
purged of its militaristic influence, to permit the Japanese 
to maintain such industries, particularly of a light consumer 
character, as offer no threat of aggression against their neigh- 
bors, but which can produce a sustaining economy, and pro- 
vide a reasonable standard of living. The statement should 
indicate our willingness, for this purpose, to give Japan trade 
access to external raw materials, but not longer any control 
over the sources of supply outside her main islands. It should 
also indicate our willingness, in accordance with our now 
established foreign trade policy, in due course to enter into 
mutually advantageous trade relations with her. 

"The withdrawal from their country as soon as the above 
objectives of the Allies are accomplished, and as soon as there 
has been established a peacefully inclined government, of a 
character representative of the masses of the Japanese people. 
I personally think that if in saying this we should add that we 
do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present 
dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of accept- 
ance. 

"6. Success of course will depend on the potency of the 



624 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

warning which we give her. She has an extremely sensitive 
national pride, and, as we are now seeing every day, when 
actually locked with the enemy will fight to the very death. 
For that reason the warning must be tendered before the actual 
invasion has occurred and while the impending destruction, 
though clear beyond peradventure, has not yet reduced her to 
fanatical despair. If Russia is a part of the threat, the Russian 
attack, if actual, must not have progressed too far. Our own 
bombing should be confined to military objectives as far as 
possible." 

HENRY L. STIMSON 
Secretary of War. 

Stimson's Harper's account went on: 

"It is important to emphasize the double character of the 
suggested warning. It was designed to promise destruction if 
Japan resisted, and hope, if she surrendered. 

"It will be noted that the atomic bomb is not mentioned in 
this memorandum. On grounds of secrecy the bomb was never 
mentioned except when absolutely necessary, and furthermore, 
it had not yet been tested. It was of course well forward in our 
minds, as the memorandum was written and discussed, that the 
bomb would be the best possible sanction if our warning were 
rejected. 

"The adoption of the policy outlined in the memorandum 
of July 2 was a decision of high politics; once it was accepted 
by the President, the position of the atomic bomb in our plan- 
ning became quite clear. I find that I stated in my diary, as 
early as June 19, that 'the last chance warning . . . must be 
given before an actual landing of the ground forces in Japan, 
and fortunately the plans provide for enough time to bring in 
the sanctions to our warning in the shape of heavy ordinary 
bombing attack and an attack of S-i.' S-i' was a code name for 
the atomic bomb. 

"There was much discussion in Washington about the tim- 
ing of the warning to Japan. The controlling factor in the end 
was the date already set for the Potsdam meeting of the Big 
Three. It was President Truman's decision that such a warning 
should be solemnly issued by the U. S. and the U. K. from this 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 625 

meeting, with the concurrence of the head of the Chinese Gov- 
ernment, so that it would be plain that all of Japan's principal 
enemies were in entire unity. This was done, in the Potsdam 
ultimatum of July 26, which very closely followed the above 
memorandum of July 2, with the exception that it made no 
mention of the Japanese Emperor. 

"On July 28 the Premier of Japan, Suzuki, rejected the 
Potsdam ultimatum by announcing that it was 'unworthy of 
public notice.' In the face of this rejection we could only pro- 
ceed to demonstrate that the ultimatum had meant exactly 
what it said when it stated that if the Japanese continued 
the war, 'the full application of our military power, backed 
by our resolve, will mean the inevitable and complete destruc- 
tion of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the 
utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.' 

"For such a purpose the atomic bomb was an eminently 
suitable weapon. The New Mexico test occurred while we 
were at Potsdam, on July 16. It was immediately clear that the 
power of the bomb measured up to our highest estimates. We 
had developed a weapon of such a revolutionary character 
that its use against the enemy might well be expected to pro- 
duce exactly the kind of shock on the Japanese ruling oli- 
garchy which we desired, strengthening the position of those 
who wished peace, and weakening that of the military party. 

"Because of the importance of the atomic mission against 
Japan, the detailed plans were brought to me by the military 
staff for approval. With President Truman's warm support I 
struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Al- 
though it was a target of considerable military importance, it 
had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of 
Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be 
spared. I approved four other targets including the cities of 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

"Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, and Nagasaki on 
August 9. These two cities were active working parts of the 
Japanese war effort. One was an army center; the other was 
naval and industrial. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the 
Japanese Army defending southern Japan and was a major 
military storage and assembly point. Nagasaki was a major 



626 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

seaport and it contained several large industrial plants of great 
wartime importance. We believed that our attacks had struck 
cities which must certainly be important to the Japanese mili- 
tary leaders, both Army and Navy, and we waited for a result. 
We waited one day. 

"Many accounts have been written about the Japanese sur- 
render. After a prolonged Japanese Cabinet session in which 
the deadlock was broken by the Emperor himself, the offer 
to surrender was made on August 10. It was based on the 
Potsdam terms, with a reservation concerning the sovereignty 
of the Emperor." 

This Japanese reservation precipitated a final discussion 
in Washington. For months there had been disagreement at 
high levels over the proper policy toward the Emperor. Some 
maintained that the Emperor must go, along with all the other 
trappings of Japanese militarism. Others urged that the war 
could be ended much more cheaply by openly revising the 
formula of "unconditional surrender" to assure the Japanese 
that there was no intention of removing the Emperor if it 
should be the desire of the Japanese people that he remain as 
a constitutional monarch. This latter view had been urged with 
particular force and skill by Joseph C. Grew, the Under 
Secretary of State, a man with profound insight into the Jap- 
anese character. For their pains Grew and those who agreed 
with him were roundly abused as appeasers. 

Stimson wholly agreed with Grew's general argument, as 
the July 2 memorandum shows. He had hoped that a specific 
assurance on the Emperor might be included in the Potsdam 
ultimatum. Unfortunately during the war years high Ameri- 
can officials had made some fairly blunt and unpleasant re-, 
marks about the Emperor, and it did not seem wise to Mr. 
Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes that the Government 
should reverse its field too sharply; too many people were 
likely to cry shame. Now, in August, the Americans were face 
to face with the issue they had dodged in previous months. 
The Japanese were ready to surrender, but, even after seeing 
in dreadful reality the fulfillment of Potsdam's threats, they 
required some assurance that the Potsdam Declaration "does 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 627 

not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives 
of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler." 

August 10 was hectic in Washington. Radio reports from 
Japan announced the surrender offer before official notifica- 
tion reached Washington by way of Switzerland, At nine 
o'clock Stimson was called to the White House where the 
President was holding a conference on the surrender terms. 
All those present seemed eager to make the most of this great 
opportunity to end the war, but there was some doubt as to 
the propriety of accepting the Japanese condition. 

"The President then asked me what my opinion was and 
I told him that I thought that even if the question hadn't been 
raised by the Japanese we would have to continue the Emperor 
ourselves under our command and supervision in order to get 
into surrender the many scattered armies of the Japanese who 
would own no other authority and that something like this 
use of the Emperor must be made in order to save us from a 
score of bloody Iwo Jimas and Okinawas all over China and 
the New Netherlands. He was the only source of authority in 
Japan under the Japanese theory of the State." (Diary, August 

10, 1945) 

The meeting at the White House soon adjourned to await 
the official surrender terms. Meanwhile Secretary Byrnes 
drafted a reply to which Stimson gave his prompt approval. 
In a later meeting this masterful paper was accepted by the 
President; it avoided any direct acceptance of the Japanese 
condition, but accomplished the desired purpose of reassuring 
the Japanese. 

The Harper's article continued : 

"While the Allied reply made no promises other than those 
already given, it implicitly recognized the Emperor's position 
by prescribing that his power must be subject to the orders 
of the Allied supreme commander. These terms were accepted 
on August 14 by the Japanese, and the instrument of surrender 
was formally signed on September 2, in Tokyo Bay. Our great 
objective was thus achieved, and all the evidence I have seen 
indicates that the controlling factor in the final Japanese de- 
cision to accept our terms of surrender was the atomic bomb." 

After the Harper's article was published, Stimson found 



628 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

that some of his friends retained certain doubts about the 
atomic decision, believing that it was based on an incorrect 
appreciation of the Japanese attitude. They asked whether 
the use of the bomb might not have been avoided if the Amer- 
ican Government had been fully aware in the spring and early 
summer of the strength of the Japanese will to surrender. 

This question, in Stimson's view, was based on a double 
misunderstanding first, of the meaning of war, and second, 
of the basic purpose of the American Government during this 
period. 

The true question, as he saw it, was not whether surrender 
could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but 
whether a different diplomatic and military course would have 
led to an earlier surrender. Here the question of intelligence 
became significant. Interviews after the war indicated clearly 
that a large element of the Japanese Cabinet was ready in the 
spring to accept substantially the same terms as those finally 
agreed on. Information of this general attitude was available 
to the American Government, but as Stimson's own paper of 
July 2 clearly shows, it was certainly not the view of American 
leaders that the Japanese already considered themselves 
beaten. It is possible, in the light of the final surrender, that a 
clearer and earlier exposition of American willingness to retain 
the Emperor would have produced an earlier ending to the 
war; this course was earnestly advocated by Grew and his 
immediate associates during May, 1945. But in the view of 
Stimson and his military advisers, it was always necessary 
to bear in mind that at least some of Japan's leaders would 
seize on any conciliatory offer as an indication of weakness. 
For this reason they did not support Grew in urging an im- 
mediate statement on the Emperor in May. The battle for 
Okinawa was proceeding slowly and with heavy losses, and 
they feared lest Japanese militarists argue that such a state- 
ment was the first proof of that American fatigue which they 
had been predicting since 1941. It seemed possible to Stimson, 
in 1947, that these fears had been based on a misreading of the 
situation. 

Yet he did not believe that any intelligence reports, short 
of a direct report that the Japanese were fully ready to sur- 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 629 

render, would have changed the basic American attitude. No 
such report was made, and none could have been made, for it 
was emphatically not the fact that Japan had decided on sur- 
render before August 6; forces in the Japanese government 
for and against surrender continued in balance until the tenth 
of August. There were reports of a weakening will to resist 
and of "feelers" for peace terms. But such reports merely 
stimulated the American leaders in their desire to press 
home on all Japanese leaders the hopelessness of their cause; 
this was the nature of warmaking. In war, as in a boxing match, 
it is seldom sound for the stronger combatant to moderate his 
blows whenever his opponent shows signs of weakening. To 
Stimson, at least, the only road to early victory was to exert 
maximum force with maximum speed. It was not the Amer- 
ican responsibility to throw in the sponge for the Japanese; 
that was one thing they must do for themselves. Only on the 
question of the Emperor did Stimson take, in 1945, a con- 
ciliatory view; only on, this question did he later believe that 
history might find that the United States, by its delay in stating 
its position, had prolonged the war. 

The second error made by critics after the war, in Stimson's 
view, was their assumption that American policy was, or should 
have been, controlled or at least influenced by a desire to avoid 
the use of the atomic bomb. In Stimson's view this would have 
been as irresponsible as the contrary course of guiding policy 
by a desire to insure the use of the bomb. Stimson believed, 
both at the time and later, that the dominant fact of 1945 was 
war, and that therefore, necessarily, the dominant objective 
was victory. If victory could be speeded by using the bomb, 
it should be used; if victory must be delayed in order to use 
the bomb, it should not be used. So far as he knew, this general 
view was fully shared by the President and all his associates. 
The bomb was thus not treated as a separate subject, except 
to determine whether it should be used at all ; once that decision 
had been made, the timing and method of the use of the bomb 
were wholly subordinated to the objective of victory; no effort 
was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve sur- 
render merely in order not to have to use the bomb. Surrender 
was a goal sufficient in itself, wholly transcending the use or 



630 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

nonuse of the bomb. And as it turned out, the use of the bomb, 
in accelerating the surrender, saved many more lives than it 
cost. 

In concluding his Harper's article, Stimson considered 
briefly the question whether the atomic bombs had caused more 
damage than they prevented. 

"The two atomic bombs which we had dropped were the 
only ones we had ready, and our rate of production at the time 
was very small. Had the war continued until the projected 
invasion on November i, additional fire raids of 6-29' s would 
have been more destructive of life and property than the very 
limited number of atomic raids which we could have executed 
in the same period. But the atomic bomb was more than a 
weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon. 
In March, 1945, our Air Forces had launched the first great 
incendiary raid on the Tokyo area. In this raid more damage 
was done and more casualties were inflicted than was the case 
at Hiroshima. Hundreds of bombers took part and hundreds 
of tons of incendiaries were dropped. Similar successive raids 
burned out a great part of the urban area of Japan, but the 
Japanese fought on. On August 6 one 8-29 dropped a single 
atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb 
was dropped on Nagasaki and the war was over. So far as 
the Japanese could know, our ability to execute atomic attacks, 
if necessary by many planes at a time, was unlimited. As Dr. 
Karl Compton has said, ( it was not one atomic bomb, or two, 
which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an 
atomic bomb will actually do to a community, plus the dread 
of many more, that was effective.' 2 

"The bomb thus served exactly the purpose we intended. 
The peace party was able to take the path of surrender, and 
the whole weight of the Emperor's prestige was exerted in 
favor of peace. When the Emperor ordered surrender, and 
the small but dangerous group of fanatics who opposed him 
were brought under control, the Japanese became so subdued 
that the great undertaking of occupation and disarmament 
was completed with unprecedented ease." 

2 K. T. Compton, "The Atomic Bomb and the Surrender of Japan," Atlantic Monthly, 
January, 1947. 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 631 

And then, in a "personal summary," Stimson reviewed the 
whole question as he had seen it in 1945. 

"Two great nations were approaching contact in a fight to a 
finish which would begin on November i, 1945. Our enemy, 
Japan, commanded forces of somewhat over 5,000,000 armed 
men. Men of these armies had already inflicted upon us, in our 
break-through of the outer perimeter of their defenses, 'over 
300,000 battle casualties. Enemy armies still unbeaten had the 
strength to cost us a million more. As long as the Japanese 
Government refused to surrender, we should be forced to take 
and hold the ground, and smash the Japanese ground armies, 
by close-in fighting of the same desperate and costly kind that 
we had faced in the Pacific islands for nearly four years. 

"In the light of the formidable problem which thus con- 
fronted us, I felt that every possible step should be taken to 
compel a surrender of the homelands, and a withdrawal of 
all Japanese troops from the Asiatic mainland and from other 
positions, before we had commenced an invasion. We held 
two cards to assist us in such an effort. One was the traditional 
veneration in which the Japanese Emperor was held by his 
subjects and the power which was thus vested in him over 
his loyal troops. It was for this reason that I suggested in my 
memorandum of July 2 that his dynasty should be continued. 
The second card was the use of the atomic bomb in the manner 
best calculated to persuade that Emperor and the counselors 
about him to submit to our demand for what was essentially 
unconditional surrender, placing his immense power over 
his people and his troops subject to our orders. 

"In order to end the war in the shortest possible time and 
to avoid the enormous losses of human life which otherwise 
confronted us, I felt that we must use the Emperor as our 
instrument to command and compel his people to cease fighting 
and subject themselves to our authority through him, and that 
to accomplish this we must give him and his controlling ad- 
visers a compelling reason to accede to our demands. This 
reason furthermore must be of such a nature that his people 
could understand his decision. The bomb seemed to me to 
furnish a unique instrument for that purpose. 

"My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the 



632 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which 
I had helped to raise. In the light of the alternatives which, on 
a fair estimate, were open to us I believe that no man, in our 
position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands 
a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose 
and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and after- 
wards looked his countrymen in the face." 

He might have added here a still more personal comment. 
In March he visited an Air Forces redistribution center in 
Florida. There he met and talked with men on their way to 
the Pacific after completing a term of duty in Europe. The 
impression he received was profound. These men were weary 
in a way that no one merely reading reports could readily 
understand. They would go to the Pacific, and they would 
fight well again, but after this meeting Stimson realized more 
clearly than ever that the primary obligation of any man 
responsible for and to these Americans was to end the war as 
quickly as possible. To discard or fail to use effectively any 
weapon that might spare them further sacrifice would be irre- 
sponsibility so flagrant as to deserve condign punishment. Para- 
phrasing Shakespeare (but with life and not death as his end) , 
Stimson could have said, as he felt, that "He hates them who 
would upon the rack of this tough war stretch them out longer." 

And yet to use the atomic bomb against cities populated 
mainly by civilians was to assume another and scarcely less 
terrible responsibility. For thirty years Stimson had been a 
champion of international law and morality. As soldier and 
Cabinet officer he had repeatedly argued that war itself must 
be restrained within the bounds of humanity. As recently as 
June i he had sternly questioned his Air Forces leader, want- 
ing to know whether the apparently indiscriminate bombings 
of Tokyo were absolutely necessary. Perhaps, as he later said, 
he was misled by the constant talk of "precision bombing," but 
he had believed that even air power could be limited in its 
use by the old concept of "legitimate military targets." Now 
in the conflagration bombings by massed B-29's he was per- 
mitting a kind of total war he had always hated, and in recom- 
mending the use of the atomic bomb he was implicitly confess- 
ing that there could be no significant limits to the horror of 



THE ATOMIC BOMB AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN 633 

modern war. The decision was not difficult, in 1945, for peace 
with victory was a prize that outweighed the payment de- 
manded. But Stimson could not dodge the meaning of his 
action. The following were the last two paragraphs of his 
article : 

"As I read over what I have written, I am aware that much 
of it, in this year of peace, may have a harsh and unfeeling 
sound. It would perhaps be possible to say the same things and 
say them more gently. But I do not think it would be wise. As 
I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of 
War, I see too many stern and heart-rending decisions to be 
willing to pretend that war is anything else than what it is. , 
The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable 
part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision 
to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to 
over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change 
that fact and I do not wish to gloss it over. But this deliberate, 
premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The 
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japa- 
nese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade ; 
it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies. 

"In this last great action of the Second World War we were 
given final proof that war is death. War in the twentieth cen- 
tury has grown steadily more barbarous, more destructive, 
more debased in all its aspects. Now, with the release of 
atomic energy, man's ability to destroy himself is very nearly 
complete. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 
ended a war. They also made it wholly clear that we must 
never have another war. This is the lesson men and leaders 
everywhere must learn, and I believe that when they learn 
it they will find a way to lasting peace. There is no other 
choice." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Bomb and Peace with Russia 



THE first reaction of the American people to the advent 
of atomic energy was a great feeling of pride and satis- 
faction in a colossal wartime achievement. The bomb which 
exploded over Hiroshima made it clear that the victory was 
at hand. But this reaction was quickly succeeded by others 
relating to the disquieting future. As Stimson put it on Aug- 
ust 9: 

"Great events have happened. The world is changed and 
it is time for sober thought. It is natural that we should take 
satisfaction in the achievement of our science, our industry, 
and our Army in creating the atomic bomb, but any satisfac- 
tion we may feel must be overshadowed by deeper emotions. 

"The result of the bomb is so terrific that the responsibility 
of its possession and its use must weigh heavily on our minds 
and on our hearts. We believe that its use will save the lives 
of American soldiers and bring more quickly to an end the 
horror of this war which the Japanese leaders deliberately 
started. Therefore, the bomb is being used. 

"No American can contemplate what Mr. Churchill has 
referred to as 'this terrible means of maintaining the rule of 
law in the world' without a determination that after this war 
is over this great force shall be used for the welfare and not 
the destruction of mankind." 

This statement was the public expression of thoughts which 
had been for many months heavily on the minds of those 
familiar with the atomic project. When Stimson went to the 
White House on April 25, 1945, to discuss the atomic bomb 
with a President from whom the matter had hitherto been 

634- 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 635 

kept secret, he took with him a memorandum which dealt 
not so much with the military use of the bomb as with its 
long-range political meaning. 



MEMORANDUM DISCUSSED WITH THE PRESIDENT 
April 2$, IQ45 

"i. Within four months we shall in all probability have 
completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human 
history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city. 

"2. Although we have shared its development with the U. 
K., physically the U. S. is at present in the position of con- 
trolling the resources with which to construct and use it and 
no other nation could reach this position for some years. 

"3. Nevertheless it is practically certain that we could not 
remain in this position indefinitely. 

"a. Various segments of its discovery and production are 
widely known among many scientists in many countries, al- 
though few scientists are now acquainted with the whole 
process which we have developed. 

"b. Although its construction under present methods re- 
quires great scientific and industrial effort and raw materials, 
which are temporarily mainly within the possession and knowl- 
edge of U. S. and U. K., it is extremely probable that much 
easier and cheaper methods of production will be discovered 
by scientists in the future, together with the use of materials 
of much wider distribution. As a result, it is extremely prob- 
able that the future will make it possible to be constructed 
by smaller nations or even groups, or at least by a large nation 
in a much shorter time. 

"4. As a result, it is indicated that the future may see a 
time when such a weapon may be constructed in secret and 
used suddenly and effectively with devastating power by a 
willful nation or group against an unsuspecting nation or group 
of much greater size and material power. With its aid even a 
very powerful unsuspecting nation might be conquered within 
a very few days by a very much smaller one. . . . 

"5. The world in its present state of moral advancement 



636 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

compared with its technical development would be eventually 
at the mercy of such a weapon. In other words, modern civil- 
ization might be completely destroyed. 

U 6. To approach any world peace organization of any pat- 
tern now likely to be considered, without an appreciation by 
the leaders of our country of the power of this new weapon, 
would seem to be unrealistic. No system of control heretofore 
considered would be adequate to control this menace. Both 
inside any particular country and between the nations of the 
world, the control of this weapon will undoubtedly be a matter 
of the greatest difficulty and would involve such thorough- 
going rights of inspection and internal controls as we have 
never heretofore contemplated. 

"7. Furthermore, in the light of our present position with 
reference to this weapon, the question of sharing it with other 
nations and, if so shared, upon what terms, becomes a primary 
question of our foreign relations. Also our leadership in the 
war and in the development of this weapon has placed a cer- 
tain moral responsibility upon us which we cannot shirk with- 
out very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization 
which it would further. 

"8. On the other hand, if the problem of the proper use 
of this weapon can be solved, we would have the opportunity 
to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the 
world and our civilization can be saved. , . ." 

And it was already apparent that the critical questions in 
American policy toward atomic energy would be directly con- 
nected with Soviet Russia. Whatever might be the complica- 
tions of domestic atomic policy, and whatever difficulties might 
arise in negotiations with noncommunist Allied nations, it 
seemed reasonable to believe that the overwhelming menace 
of uncontrolled atomic power would in these areas compel 
satisfactory agreement and effective controls. But in the case 
of Russia matters were wholly different. There was no assur- 
ance that the Russians would hasten to agree on controls, nor 
could any agreement including Russia be regarded with any 
great confidence unless it contained such far-reaching rights of 
inspection as to counterbalance (and perhaps, in Russian eyes, 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 637 

to undermine) the protective and fearsome secrecy of a police 
state. 

Even the immediate tactical discussion about the bomb in- 
volved the Russians. Much of the policy of the United States 
toward Russia, from Teheran to Potsdam, was dominated by 
the eagerness of the Americans to secure a firm Russian com- 
mitment to enter the Pacific war. And at Potsdam there were 
Americans who thought still in terms of securing Russian 
help in the Pacific war. Stimson himself had always hoped 
that the Russians would come into the Japanese war, but he 
had had no part in the negotiations by which Franklin Roose- 
velt tried to insure this result, and in June, 1945, he was dis- 
turbed to find that a part of the Russian price was a Soviet 
lease of Port 'Arthur and Soviet participation with the Chinese 
in the control of the Manchurian railways. This agreement 
was accompanied by a Russian promise to leave the Chinese 
in full control of Manchuria, but in the light of the Polish 
situation Russian promises of this character no longer seemed 
reliable. Such an agreement was perhaps better than nothing, 
but it would be an irony indeed if a new Manchurian crisis 
should one day develop because of arrangements made during 
a war whose origins were in that very area. 

The news from Alamogordo, arriving at Potsdam on July 
1 6, made it clear to the Americans that further diplomatic 
efforts to bring the Russians into the Pacific war were largely 
pointless. The bomb as a merely probable weapon had seemed 
a weak reed on which to rely, but the bomb as a colossal reality 
was very different. The Russians may well have been disturbed 
to find that President Truman was rather losing his interest in 
knowing the exact date on which they would come into the 
war. 

The Russians at Potsdam were not acting in a manner cal- 
culated to increase the confidence of the Americans or the 
British in their future intentions. Stalin expressed a vigorous 
and disturbing interest in securing bases in the Mediterranean 
and other areas wholly outside the sphere of normal Russian 
national interest, while Russian insistence on de facto control 
of Central Europe hardly squared with the principles of the 
Atlantic Charter to which the Russians had so firmly an- 



638 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

nounced their adherence in early 1942. These extravagant 
demands were backed by the Red Army, which was daily 
increasing in its relative strength in Europe, as the Americans 
began their redeployment for the Pacific attack. Naturally, 
therefore, news of the atomic bomb was received in Potsdam 
with great and unconcealed satisfaction by Anglo-American 
leaders. At first blush it appeared to give democratic diplomacy 
a badly needed "equalizer." 

Stimson personally was deeply disturbed, at Potsdam, by 
his first direct observation of the Russian police state in action. 
The courtesy and hospitality of the Russians was unfailing, 
but there was evident nonetheless, palpable and omnipresent, 
the atmosphere of dictatorial repression. Nothing in his pre- 
vious life matched this experience, and it was not particularly 
heartening to know that the Soviet machine for the time being 
was operating to insure the comfort and safety of the Allied 
visitors. Partly at firsthand and partly through the reports of 
Army officers who had observed the Russians closely during 
the first months of the occupation, Stimson now saw clearly 
the massive brutality of the Soviet system and the total suppres- 
sion of freedom inflicted by the Russian leaders first on their 
own people and then on those whose lands they occupied. The 
words "police state" acquired for him a direct and terrible 
meaning. What manner of men were these with whom to 
build a peace in the atomic age? 

For the problem of lasting peace remained the central 
question. Any "equalizing" value of the atomic bomb could 
only be of short-range and limited value, however natural it 
might be for democratic leaders to be cheered and heartened 
by the knowledge of their present possession of this final 
arbiter of force. As Stimson well knew, this advantage was 
temporary. 

But could atomic energy be controlled, he asked himself, 
if one of the partners in control was a state dictatorially and 
repressively governed by a single inscrutable character? 
Could there be any settlement of lasting value with the Soviet 
Russia of Stalin? With these questions and others crowding 
his mind, he wrote in Potsdam for the President a paper 
headed, "Reflections on the Basic Problems Which Confront 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 639 

Us." It was a tentative and, as he later thought, an incomplete 
piece of work, presenting only one side of a many-sided ques- 
tion. But it was all right as far as it went. 

The central concern of this paper was the Russian police 
state, and only secondly the atomic bomb. Stimson's first main 
point was that the present state of Russia, if continued without 
change, would very possibly in the end produce a war. 

"i. With each international conference that passes and, in 
fact, with each month that passes between conferences, it 
becomes clearer that the great basic problem of the future is 
the stability of the relations of the Western democracies with 
Russia. 

"2. With each such time that passes it also becomes clear 
that that problem arises out of the fundamental differences 
between a nation of free thought, free speech, free elections, 
in fact, a really free people, [and] a nation which is not basi- 
cally free but which is systematically controlled from above 
by secret police and in which free speech is not permitted. 

"3. It also becomes clear that no permanently safe inter- 
national relations can be established between two such funda- 
mentally different national systems. With the best of efforts 
we cannot understand each other. Furthermore, in an auto- 
cratically controlled system, policy cannot be permanent. It 
is tied up with the life of one man. Even if a measure of mental 
accord is established with one head the resulting agreement is 
liable to be succeeded by an entirely different policy coming 
from a different successor. 

"4. Daily we find our best efforts for co-ordination and 
sympathetic understanding with Russia thwarted by the sus- 
picion which basically and necessarily must exist in any con- 
trolled organization of men. 

"5. Thus every effort we make at permanent organization 
of such a world composed of two such radically different 
systems is subject to frustration by misunderstandings arising 
out of mutual suspicion. 

"6. The great problem ahead is how to deal with this basic 
difference which exists as a flaw in our desired accord. I believe 
we must not accept the present situation as permanent for the 



640 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

result will then almost inevitably be a new war and the destruc- 
tion of our civilization." 

It was easier to state the problem and insist that it be 
solved than to suggest any course likely to be effective. Stimson 
fou'nd some hope in the brave words of the Soviet Constitution 
of 1936. They were an indication that Stalin knew at least 
what freedom ought to mean. But they did not suggest any 
clear answer to the questions he then posed, "(a) When can 
we take any steps without doing more harm than good? (b) 
By what means can we proceed? (i) by private diplomatic 
discussion of the reasons for our distrust? (2) by encouraging 
open public discussions? (3) by setting conditions for any 
concessions which Russia may ask in respect to territorial 
concessions, loans, bases, or any other concessions? 

"How far these conditions can extend is a serious problem. 
At the start it may be possible to effect only some ameliora- 
tion of the local results of Russia's secret police state. 77 

All these aspects of the Russian problem paled in meaning 
before the question of Russia and atomic energy. And in the 
last paragraph of his Potsdam reflections Stimson came to a 
gloomy conclusion. 

"7. The foregoing has a vital bearing upon the control of 
the vast and revolutionary discovery of X [atomic energy] 
which is now confronting us. Upon the successful control of 
that energy depends the future successful development or 
destruction of the modern civilized world. The committee 
appointed by the War Department which has been consider- 
ing that control has pointed this out in no uncertain terms and 
has called for an international organization for that purpose. 
After careful reflection I am of the belief that no world 
organization containing as one of its dominant members a 
nation whose people are not possessed of free speech, but 
whose governmental action is controlled by the autocratic 
machinery of a secret political police, can give effective 
control of this new agency with its devastating possibilities. 

"I therefore believe that before we share our new discovery 
with Russia we should consider carefully whether we can 
do so safely under any system of control until Russia puts 
into effective action the proposed constitution which I have 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 641 

mentioned. If this is a necessary condition, we must go slowly 
in any disclosures or agreeing to any Russian participation 
whatsoever and constantly explore the question how our head- 
start in X and the Russian desire to participate can be used 
to bring us nearer to the removal of the basic difficulties which 
I have emphasized." 

Returning from Potsdam Stimson found himself nearing 
the limits of his strength, and after two weeks made crowded 
by the atomic attacks and their announcement, followed by 
the surrender negotiations, he retreated from Washington for 
three weeks of rest. In the quiet of the Adirondacks he 
thought again about the atom and Russia. Twice McCloy 
came from Washington to talk with him, and at the other 
end of the secret telephone were Harrison and Bundy; the 
War Department civilian staff was thinking long and painful 
thoughts about the atomic triumph. 

Stimson was worried. Granting all that could be said about 
the wickedness of Russia, was it not perhaps true that the 
atom itself, not the Russians, was the central problem? Could 
civilization survive with atomic energy uncontrolled? And 
was it practical to hope that the atomic "secret" so fragile 
and short-lived could be used to win concessions from the 
Russian leaders as to their cherished, if frightful, police state? 
A long talk with Ambassador Harriman persuaded Stimson 
that such a hope was unfounded ; the Russians, said Harriman, 
would regard any American effort to bargain for freedom in 
Russia as a plainly hostile move. Might it not then be better 
to reverse the process, to meet Russian suspicion with Amer- 
ican candor, to discuss the bomb directly with them and try 
to reach agreement on control? Might not trust beget trust; 
as Russian confidence was earned, might not the repressive 
and aggressive tendencies of Stalinism be abated? As he 
pondered these questions and above all as he pondered a 
world of atomic competition Stimson modified his earlier 
opinion and on September 1 1 he sent to the President a 
memorandum urging immediate and direct negotiations with 
the Russians looking toward a "covenant" for the control of 
the atom. With its covering letter, the memorandum is self- 
explanatory. 



642 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

September n, 1945 
Dear Mr. President: 

In handing you today my memorandum about our relations 
with Russia in respect to the atomic bomb, I am not unmind- 
ful of the fact that when in Potsdam I talked with you about 
the question whether we could be safe in sharing the atomic 
bomb with Russia while she was still a police state and before 
she put into effect provisions assuring personal rights of 
liberty to the individual citizen. 

I still recognize the difficulty and am still convinced of the 
ultimate importance of a change in Russian attitude toward 
individual liberty but I have come to the conclusion that it 
would not be possible to use our possession of the atomic bomb 
as a direct lever to produce the change. I have become con- 
vinced that any demand by us for an internal change in Russia 
as a condition of sharing in the atomic weapon would be so 
resented that it would make the objective we have in view 
less probable. 

I believe that the change in attitude toward the individual 
in Russia will come slowly and gradually and I am satisfied 
that we should not delay our approach to Russia in the matter 
of the atomic bomb until that process has been completed. My 
reasons are set forth in the memorandum I am handing you 
today. Furthermore, I believe that this long process of change 
in Russia is more likely to be expedited by the closer relation- 
ship in the matter of the atomic bomb which I suggest and 
the trust and confidence that I believe would be inspired by 
the method of approach which I have outlined. 

Faithfully yours, 
HENRY L. STIMSON 
Secretary of War. 
The President, 
The White House. 



MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT 
// September IQ45 

Subject: Proposed Action for Control of Atomic Bombs. 
"The advent of the atomic bomb has stimulated great mili- 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 643 

tary and probably even greater political interest throughout 
the civilized world. In a world atmosphere already extremely 
sensitive to power, the introduction of this weapon has pro- 
foundly affected political considerations in all sections of 
the globe. 

"In many quarters it has been interpreted as a substantial 
offset to the growth of Russian influence on the continent. We 
can be certain that the Soviet Government has sensed this 
tendency and the temptation will be strong for the Soviet 
political and military leaders to acquire this weapon in the 
shortest possible time. Britain in effect already has the status 
of a partner with us in the development of this weapon. 
Accordingly, unless the Soviets are voluntarily invited into 
the partnership upon a basis of co-operation and trust, we are 
going to maintain the Anglo-Saxon bloc over against the 
Soviet in the possession of this weapon. Such a condition will 
almost certainly stimulate feverish activity on the part of the 
Soviet toward the development of this bomb in what will in 
effect be a secret armament race of a rather desperate char- 
acter. There is evidence to indicate that such activity may 
have already commenced. 

"If we feel, as I assume we must, that civilization demands 
that some day we shall arrive at a satisfactory international 
arrangement respecting the control of this new force, the 
question then is how long we can afford to enjoy our momen- 
tary superiority in the hope of achieving our immediate peace 
council objectives. 

"Whether Russia gets control of the necessary secrets of 
production in a minimum of say four years or a maximum 
of twenty years is not nearly as important to the world and 
civilization as to make sure that when they do get it they are 
willing and co-operative partners among the peace-loving 
nations of the world. It is true if we approach them now, as I 
would propose, we may be gambling on their good faith and 
risk their getting into production of bombs a little sooner 
than they would otherwise. 

"To put the matter concisely, I consider the problem of our 
satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected with 
but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb. 
Except for the problem of the control of that bomb, those 



644 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

relations, while vitally important, might not be immediately 
pressing. The establishment of relations of mutual confidence 
between her and us could afford to await the slow progress 
of time. But with the discovery of the bomb, they became 
immediately emergent. Those relations may be perhaps irre- 
trievably embittered by the way in which we approach the 
solution of the bomb with Russia. For if we fail to approach 
them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having 
this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicions 
and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increased 
It will inspire them to greater efforts in an all-out effort to 
solve the problem. If the solution is achieved in that spirit 
it is much less likely that we will ever get the kind of covenant 
we may desperately need in the future. This risk is, I believe, 
greater than the other, inasmuch as our objective must be 
to get the best kind of international bargain we can one 
that has some chance of being kept and saving civilization 
not for five or for twenty years, but forever. 

"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the 
only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him ; and 
the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him 
and show your distrust. 

"If the atomic bomb were merely another though more 
devastating military weapon to be assimilated into our pattern 
of international relations, it would be one thing. We could 
then follow the old custom of secrecy and nationalistic military 
superiority relying on international caution to prescribe the 
future use of the weapon as we did with gas. But I think the 
bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control 
by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and 
dangerous to fit into the old concepts. I think it really caps 
the climax of the race between man's growing technical power 
for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control 
and group control his moral power. If so, our method of 
approach to the Russians is a question of the most vital im- 
portance in the evolution of human progress. 

"Since the crux of the problem is Russia, any contemplated 
action leading to the control of this weapon should be 

1 Italics added. Stimson later considered those sentences and one later passage to be 
the heart of the memorandum. 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 645 

primarily directed to Russia. It is my judgment that the 
Soviet would be more apt to respond sincerely to a direct 
and forthright approach made by the United States on this 
subject than would be the case if the approach were made 
as a part of a general international scheme, or if the approach 
were made after a succession of express or implied threats or 
near threats in our peace negotiations. 

"My idea of an approach to the Soviets would be a direct 
proposal after discussion with the British that we would 
be prepared in effect to enter an arrangement with the Rus- 
sians, the general purpose of which would be to control and 
limit the use of the atomic bomb as an instrument of war and 
so far as possible to direct and encourage the development 
of atomic power for peaceful and humanitarian purposes. 
Such an approach might more specifically lead to the proposal 
that we would stop work on the further improvement in, or 
manufacture of, the bomb as a military weapon, provided the 
Russians and the British would agree to do likewise. It might 
also provide that we would be willing to impound what 
bombs we now have in the United States provided the Rus- 
sians and the British would agree with us that in no event 
will they or we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless 
all three Governments agree to that use. We might also 
consider including in the arrangement a covenant with the 
U. K. and the Soviets providing for the exchange of benefits 
of future developments whereby atomic energy may be ap- 
plied on a mutually satisfactory basis for commercial or 
humanitarian purposes. 

"I would make such an approach just as soon as our im- 
mediate political considerations make it appropriate. 

"I emphasize perhaps beyond all other considerations the 
importance of taking this action with Russia as a proposal of 
the United States backed by Great Britain but peculiarly the 
proposal of the United States. Action of any international 
group of nations, including many small nations who have not 
demonstrated their potential power or responsibility in this 
war would not, in my opinion, be taken seriously by the 
Soviets? The loose debates which would surround such 
proposal, if put before a conference of nations, would provoke 

2 Italics added; this was the most important point of all. 



646 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

but scant favor from the Soviet. As I say, I think this is the 
most important point in the program. 

"After the nations which have won this war have agreed 
to it, there will be ample time to introduce France and China 
into the covenants and finally to incorporate the agreement 
into the scheme of the United Nations. The use of this bomb 
has been accepted by the world as the result of the initiative 
and productive capacity of the United States, and I think 
this factor is a most potent lever toward having our proposals 
accepted by the Soviets, whereas I am most skeptical of 
obtaining any tangible results by way of any international 
debate. I urge this method as the most realistic means of 
accomplishing this vitally important step in the history of 
the world. 

"HENRY L. STIMSON 
"Secretary of War." 



These opinions, which he urgently expressed again to the 
President and the Cabinet on the day of his retirement, were 
the ones with which Stimson left office. As an expression of 
-his views in 1947, they were seriously incomplete. A major 
point of his September memorandum was that the best way 
to make a man trustworthy was to trust him. This point he 
publicly re-emphasized in his last press conference. But what 
if the man whose trust you sought was a cynical "realist" 
who did not choose to be your friend? What if Stalin and 
his lieutenants were in this final and essential test of purpose 
no different from Hitler? What if the police state were no 
transitional revolutionary device but a fixed and inevitable 
accompaniment of nationalistic aggression? Would trust and 
candor by themselves break down or even modify the menace 
to the world in such a case? 

These questions and others like them acquired for Stimson 
new and pregnant meaning in the two years that followed his 
presentation of the September memorandum. The behavior 
of the Russians during this period filled him with astonish- 
ment and regret. Like many other Americans, he had met and 
talked with Stalin during the years of effective wartime 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 647 

alliance (at Potsdam in July, 1945). Like other Americans, 
he had received Stalin's cordial acquiescence in his general 
statement that Russia and the United States were natural 
friends and allies. But in the two years after Potsdam Russian 
policy everywhere was based on broken pledges, and the 
United States replaced Nazi Germany as the target of Com- 
munist abuse. Russian hostility to the Western democracies 
was not in the main a reaction to antecedent Western wicked- 
ness. It was the Russians who ended the wartime friendship. 

Soviet threats against Greece and Turkey, Soviet aggression 
in Iran, and the maneuvers of Russian-dominated Communists 
everywhere raised deep and serious questions about the basic 
intentions of the Kremlin. It was a daring and imaginative 
democrat indeed who could ignore in 1947 the mountain of 
evidence supporting the hypothesis that Stalin and his asso- 
ciates were committed to a policy of expansion and dictatorial 
repression. In so far as it insufficiently emphasized this aspect 
of the Russian problem, Stimson's September memorandum 
was dangerously one-sided. 

Yet that memorandum was not designed to present a com- 
plete policy, but only to urge a certain tactical procedure. 
Presented at a time when some Americans were eager for 
their country to browbeat the Russians with the atomic bomb 
"held rather ostentatiously on our hip," it was designed to pre- 
sent an alternative line, aiming at a great effort to persuade 
the Russians that, in a choice between two worlds and one, 
they could find more profit in the latter. Stimson had no desire 
to criticize the course actually followed by the United States 
between September and December, 1945, but he did not be- 
lieve that this course represented precisely the policy and 
method he had in mind in presenting his September memo- 
randum. This was not by any means the result of a purely 
American decision; the Russians continued to make it ex- 
tremely difficult for any American negotiator to conduct the 
sort of bed-rock discussion of fundamental problems which 
Stimson was advocating. The good faith and honorable inten- 
tions of those charged with American policy in this period 
seemed to Stimson unquestionable. If he had a difference with 
them, it was in method and emphasis, and not in basic pur- 



648 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

pose. Nor could he claim with any certainty that his own pol- 
icy would have been more successful. If there had been an 
immediate and direct effort, in September, 1945, to reach 
agreement with Russia on the control of atomic energy, would 
it have been successful? Stimson could not say. Much 
would have depended on the manner in which the attempt 
was made; there would have been required a clear under- 
standing, detailed and definitive, of what was meant by the 
"covenant" Stimson proposed; such a covenant would surely 
have involved more than the mutual assurances that had been 
so quickly violated by the Russians after Yalta and Potsdam. 
In talking with the Russians about the atom it would have 
been necessary to "talk turkey." If these points were not clearly 
stated in the September memorandum, it was because at that 
time it was Stimson's primary object to turn the thoughts of 
his colleagues back to the great principle of direct negotiation 
on basic issues which had been so long pursued by Franklin 
Roosevelt, and upon which Stimson's whole experience in 
forty years of public service had led him to rely. If the 
Americans and the Russians could reach real agreement, 
face to face, on atomic energy, then the world could breathe 
more easily and turn back with renewed optimism to lesser 
questions. In 1947 Stimson was inclined to think the chances 
of a successful direct approach in 1945 had been smaller than 
he thought at the time; but the existence of any chance at all 
would have justified the attempt, so great was the objective 
at stake. 

And even two years later he still believed that there was 
every reason to keep open wide the door to Russian-American 
agreement The detailed plan for international control of 
atomic energy developed and advocated by the American 
Government he thoroughly approved. Yet he could not believe 
that in the United Nations Commission, in an atmosphere of 
charge and countercharge, with a dozen nations free to 
comment and amend, there was available to the United States 
the best means of winning Russian adherence to those pro- 
posals. The way to agreement was still in direct action. 

But in 1947 he was no longer able to believe that American 
policy could be based solely on a desire for agreement with 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 649 

Russia, and writing in the summer of 1947* he saw the proper 
line of policy as a sort of synthesis of his two memoranda of 
1945. He dismissed as "naive and dangerous" any refusal "to 
recognize the strong probability that one of our great and 
powerful neighbor nations is at present controlled by men 
who are convinced that the very course of history is set 
against democracy and freedom, as we understand those 
words." 

He continued with an explanation of his unhappy con- 
clusions : "We have been very patient with the Soviet Govern- 
ment, and very hopeful of its good intentions. I have been 
among those who shared in these hopes and counseled this 
patience. The magnificent and loyal war effort of the Russian 
people, and the great successful efforts at friendliness made 
during the war by President Roosevelt, gave us good reason 
for hope. I have believed and I still believe that we must 
show good faith in all our dealings with the Russians, and 
that only by so doing can we leave the door open for Russian 
good faith toward us. I cannot too strongly express my regret 
that since the early spring of 1945 even before the death of 
Mr. Roosevelt the Soviet Government has steadily pursued 
an obstructive and unfriendly course. It has been our hope 
that the Russians would choose to be our friends; it was and 
is our conviction that such a choice would be to their ad- 
vantage. But, for the time being, at least, those who determine 
Russian policy have chosen otherwise, and their choice has 
been slavishly followed by Communists everywhere. 

"No sensible American can now ignore this fact, and those 
who now choose to travel in company with American Com- 
munists are very deafly either knaves or fools. This is a 
judgment which I make reluctantly, but there is no help for 
it. I have often said that the surest way to make a man 
trustworthy is to trust him. But I must add that this does 
not always apply to 'a man who is determined to make you 
his dupe. Before we can make friends with the Russians, their 
leaders will have to be convinced that they have nothing to 
gain, and everything to lose, by acting on the assumption 

3 "The Challenge to Americans," Foreign Affairs, October, 1947. 



650 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

that our society is dying and that our principles are outworn. 
Americans who think they can make common cause with 
present-day communism are living in a world that does not 



exist" 



But Stimson was not willing to accept the argument of 
extreme anti-Russians that only force would stop communism. 
"An equal and opposite error is made by those who argue 
that Americans by strong-arm methods, perhaps even by a 
'preventive war/ can and should rid the world of the Com- 
munist menace. I cannot believe that this view is widely held. 
For it is worse than nonsense; it results from a hopeless mis- 
understanding of the geographical and military situation, and 
a cynical incomprehension of what the people of the world 
will tolerate from any nation. Worst of all, this theory in- 
dicates a totally wrong assessment of the basic attitudes and 
motives of the American people. Even if it were true that the 
United States now had the opportunity to establish forceful 
hegemony throughout the world, we could not possibly take 
that opportunity without deserting our true inheritance. Amer- 
icans as conquerors would be tragically miscast" 

He preferred a middle course. "In dealing with the Rus- 
sians, both uncritical trust and unmitigated belligerence are 
impossible. There is a middle course. We do not yet know 
surely in what proportion unreasonable fears and twisted 
hopes are at the root of the perverted policy now followed 
by the Kremlin. Assuming both to be involved, we must 
disarm the fears and disappoint the hopes. We must no longer 
let the tide of Soviet expansion cheaply roll into the empty 
places left by war, and yet we must make it perfectly clear 
that we are not ourselves expansionist Our task is to help 
threatened peoples to help themselves. . . . 

"Soviet intransigence is based in very large part on the 
hope and belief that all noncommunist systems are doomed. 
Soviet policy aims to help them die. We must hope that time 
and the success of freedom and democracy in the Western 
world will convince both the Soviet leaders and the Russian 
people now behind them that our system is here to stay. This 
may not be possible; dictators do not easily change their 
hearts, and the modern armaments they possess may make it 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 651 

hard for their people to force such a change. Rather than 
be persuaded of their error, the Soviet leaders might in 
desperation resort to war, and against that possibility we have 
to guard by maintaining our present military advantages. We 
must never forget that while peace is a joint responsibility, 
the decision for war can be made by a single power; our 
military strength must be maintained as a standing discourage- 
ment to aggression. 

"I do not, however, expect the Russians to make war. I do 
not share the gloomy fear of some that we are now engaged 
in the preliminaries of an inevitable conflict. Even the most 
repressive dictatorship is not perfectly unassailable from 
within, and the most frenzied fanaticism is never unopposed. 
Whatever the ideological bases of Soviet policy, it seems clear 
that some at least of the leaders of Russia are men who have 
a marked respect for facts. We must make it wholly evident 
that a nonaggressive Russia will have nothing to fear from 
us. We must make it clear, too, that the Western noncom- 
munist world is going to survive in growing economic and 
political stability. If we can do this, then slowly but perhaps 
less slowly than we now believe the Russian leaders may 
either change their minds or lose their jobs." 

In such a policy atomic control must wait for a change of 
attitude in Russia. Stimson continued to believe that "the riven 
atom uncontrolled can only be a growing menace to us all," 
and that "upon us, as the people who first harnessed and made 
use of this force, there rests a grave and continuing responsibil- 
ity for leadership, turning it toward life, not death." He was 
further convinced that "lasting peace and freedom cannot be 
achieved until the world finds a way toward the necessary 
government of the whole." But he was forced to the conclusion 
also that these goals were dependent on Russian agreement. 
"We cannot have world government or atomic control by 
wishing for them, and we cannot have them, in any meaning- 
ful sense, without Russia. If in response to our best effort there 
comes no answer but an everlasting 'NO,' then we must go to 
work in other fields to change the frame of mind that caused 
that answer. We cannot ignore it." 

But the core of this statement, published on Stimson's 



652 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

eightieth birthday, was not his opinion of Russia, though that 
was what the press mainly noted. His central argument was 
directed once again, in hope and challenge, to the American 
people. Drawing on his unhappy knowledge of past failures 
as well as his experience of success, he summarized his under- 
standing of the central issues of American foreign policy. 
And he found the final question to be u one of will and under- 
standing." The following excerpts may stand as a better 
summary of his position than any restatement would be. 

"Americans must now understand that the United States 
has become, for better or worse, a wholly committed member 
of the world community. This has not happened by conscious 
choice ; but it is a plain fact, and our only choice is whether or 
not to face it. For more than a generation the increasing 
interrelation of American life with the life of the world has 
outpaced our thinking and our policy; our refusal to catch 
up with reality during these years was the major source of our 
considerable share of the responsibility for the catastrophe 
of World War II. 

"It is the first condition of effective foreign policy that this 
nation put away forever any thought that America can again 
be an island to herself. No private program and no public 
policy, in any sector of our national life, can now escape from 
the compelling fact that if it is not framed with reference to 
the world, it is framed with perfect futility. This would be 
true if there were no such thing as nuclear fission, and if all 
the land eastward from Poland to the Pacific were under 
water. Atomic energy and Soviet Russia are merely the two 
most conspicuous present demonstrations of what we have 
at stake in world affairs. The attitude of isolationism 
political or economic must die; in all its many forms the 
vain hope that we can live alone must be abandoned. 

"As a corollary to this first great principle, it follows that 
we shall be wholly wrong if we attempt to set a maximum or 
margin to our activity as members of the world. The only 
question we can safely ask today is whether in any of our 
actions on the world stage we are doing enough. In American 
policy toward the world there is no place for grudging or 
limited participation, and any attempt to cut our losses by 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 653 

setting bounds to our policy can only turn us backward onto 
the deadly road toward self-defeating isolation. 

"Our stake in the peace and freedom of the world is not 
a limited liability. Time after time in other years we have 
tried to solve our foreign problems with halfway measures, 
acting under the illusion that we could be partly in the world 
and partly irresponsible. Time after time our Presidents and 
Secretaries of State have been restrained, by their own fears 
or by public opinion, from effective action. It should by 
now be wholly clear that only failure, and its follower, war, 
can result from such efforts at a cheap solution. 

"We have fresh before us the contrary example of our 
magnificent success in wartime, when we have not stopped to 
count the cost. I have served as Secretary of State in a time 
of frightened isolationism, and as Secretary of War in a time 
of brave and generous action. I know the withering effect of 
limited commitments, and I know the regenerative power of 
full action. I know, too, that America can afford it as who 
does not know it, in the face of our record in the last seven 
years? . . . 

"The essential question is one which we should have to 
answer if there were not a Communist alive. Can we make 
freedom and prosperity real in the present world? If we can, 
communism is no threat. If not, with or without communism, 
our own civilization would ultimately fail. 

"The immediate and pressing challenge to our belief in 
freedom and prosperity is in western Europe. Here are people 
who have traditionally shared our faith in human dignity. 
These are the nations by whose citizens our land was settled 
and in whose tradition our civilization is rooted. They are 
threatened by communism but only because of the dark 
shadows cast by the hopelessness, hunger, and fear that have 
been the aftermath of the Nazi war. Communism or no com- 
munism, menace or no menace, it is our simple duty as neigh- 
bors to take a generous part in helping these great peoples to 
help themselves. 

"The reconstruction of western Europe is a task from which 
Americans can decide to stand apart only if they wish to 
desert every principle by which they claim to live. And, as a 



654 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

decision of policy, it would be the most tragic mistake in our 
history. We must take part in this work; we must take our 
full part; we must be sure that we do enough. 

"I must add that I believe we should act quickly. The 
penalty of delay in reconstruction is to increase the size of the 
job and to multiply difficulties. We require a prompt and 
large-scale program. The Government must lead the way, 
but we who are private citizens must support that leadership 
as men in all parties supported help to our allies in 1941. The 
sooner we act, the surer our success and the less it will 
cost us. ... 

"As we take part in the rebuilding of Europe, we must 
remember that we are building world peace, not an American 
peace. Freedom demands tolerance, and many Americans 
have much to learn about the variety of forms which free 
societies may take. There are Europeans, just as there are 
Americans, who do not believe in freedom, but they are in a 
minority, and ... we shall not be able to separate the sheep 
from the goats merely by asking whether they believe in our 
particular economic and political system. Our co-operation 
with the free men of Europe must be founded on the basic 
principles of human dignity, and not on any theory that their 
way to freedom must be exactly the same as ours. We cannot 
ask that Europe be rebuilt in the American image. If we 
join in the task of reconstruction with courage, confidence, 
and good will, we shall learn and teach a lot. But we must 
start with a willingness to understand. 

"The reconstruction of western Europe is the immediate 
task. With it we have, of course, a job at home. We must 
maintain freedom and prosperity here. This is a demanding 
task in itself, and its success or failure will largely determine 
all our other efforts. If it is true that our prosperity depends 
on that of the world, it is true also that the whole world's 
economic future hangs on our success at home. We must go 
forward to new levels of peacetime production, and to do 
this we must all of us avoid the pitfalls of laziness, fear, and 
irresponsibility. Neither real profits nor real wages can be 
permanently sustained and still less increased by anything 
but rising production. 



THE BOMB AND PEACE WITH RUSSIA 655 

"But I see no reason for any man to face the American 
future with any other feeling than one of confident hope. 
However grave our problems, and however difficult their 
solution, I do not believe that this country is ready to acknowl- 
edge that failure is foreordained. It is our task to disprove and 
render laughable that utterly insulting theory. Our future 
does not depend on the tattered forecasts of Karl Marx. It 
depends on us. ... 

"We need not suppose that the task we face is easy, or that 
all our undertakings will be quickly successful. The construc- 
tion of a stable peace is a longer, more complex, and greater 
task than the relatively simple work of warmaking. But the 
nature of the challenge is the same. The issue before us today 
is at least as significant as the one which we finally faced in 
1941. By a long series of mistakes and failures, dating back 
over a span of more than twenty years, we had in 1941 let it 
become too late to save ourselves by peaceful methods ; in the 
end we had to fight. This is not true today. If we act now, with 
vigor and understanding, with steadiness and without fear, we 
can peacefully safeguard our freedom. It is only if we turn 
our backs, in mistaken complacence or mistrusting timidity, 
that war may again become inevitable. 

"How soon this nation will fully understand the size and 
nature of its present mission, I do not dare to say. But I 
venture to assert that in very large degree the future of man- 
kind depends on the answer to this question. And I am 
confident that if the issues are clearly presented, the American 
people will give the right answer. Surely there is here a fair 
and tempting challenge to all Americans, and especially to 
the nation's leaders, in and out of office." 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Last Month 



WHEN Franklin Roosevelt died and Harry Truman suc- 
ceeded him, Stimson like other members of the Cabinet 
submitted his resignation to the new President. Mr. Truman 
promptly and earnestly assured his Secretary of War that he 
was wanted not just temporarily but as long as he could stay, 
and Stimson and the War Department continued to receive 
from the White House the firm and understanding support to 
which they had become accustomed in the previous five years. 

But already, in April, 1945, Stimson knew that he was in a 
race. Humanly, he wanted to stay at his job until victory was 
achieved. Just as humanly, he was beginning to tire. He was 
now nearly seventy-eight, and the accumulated strain of five 
years in Washington had begun to affect his heart. More and 
more he was forced to limit his effort, concentrating after 
April mainly on the policy questions presented by the atomic 
bomb. His personal staff and General Marshall combined to 
save him work wherever possible, but neither they nor he him- 
self could desire that he should remain beyond the time when 
he could usefully serve. 

The European war ended in May. In July Stimson went to 
Potsdam. On August 6 the first atomic bomb was dropped. 
The Japanese war seemed almost over. But on August 8 Stim- 
son prepare^ to face retirement; his doctors had told him that 
he needed a complete rest and he went again to the White 
House to suggest his resignation. Mr. Truman told him to take 
his rest at once for a month if necessary, and then to report 
back for duty if he could. The war was almost over, he said, 
and he wanted Stimson with him at its end. Then on August 

656 



THE LAST MONTH 657 

10 the surrender message came through. Stimson went away 
for a rest, but it was already clear that he was resting for the 
final ordeal of winding up his affairs in office, and not for fur- 
ther active service. On his return he formally requested that 
his resignation be accepted, and President Truman and he 
fixed September 21 as a suitable date. It would be his seventy- 
eighth birthday. 

I. JUDGMENT ON THE ARMY 

Between the tenth of August and the twenty-first of Septem- 
ber Stimson was mainly occupied with two subjects: the fu- 
ture of the atomic bomb, which has been discussed in the last 
chapter, and the recognition by appropriate awards of his as- 
sociates in the War Department. It was a time for casting up 
the balance and weighing the achievement of men who had 
served the Army in the war. Naturally too it was a time for 
looking over the achievement of the Army as a whole. 

The Army of the United States in World War II was a 
triumphant compound of many elements troops, command- 
ers, staff, and high command. All of them, of course, were sus- 
tained and equipped by the unflagging spirit and the unpar- 
alleled productive strength of their countrymen at home, but as 
his mind turned back over five years of service it was not the 
weapons or the supplies that Stimson mainly pondered it 
was the men. He would not admit that anything they had 
shown themselves to be had surprised him, but he was proud 
to say that they had measured fully up to his highest expecta- 
tions. 

The troops had been mobilized as if from nowhere, until 
in five crowded years a skeleton force of a quarter-million men 
became a fully armed and battle-trained victorious host of 
over eight million. This was America in arms not four men 
in a hundred had been professional soldiers before. And the 
Army had been America's finest, losing nothing in compari- 
son with its three great predecessors of the Revolution, the 
Civil War, and World War I. 

The spirit and quality of these troops defied description, 
for as the war was unexampled in complexity, so the activities 



658 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

and accomplishments of American soldiers were of unnum- 
bered variety. Yet everywhere that Stimson saw them certain 
things remained constant. They were young in heart and in- 
nocent, though they might have laughed with soldiers' oaths 
to hear themselves so called. They were technically skillful 
and self-confident. They were good in attack, brilliant in pur- 
suit, and best of all, surprised, angry, and magnificent in de- 
fense. They hated the whole ghastly business of war, and 
sometimes they were sorry for themselves, yet they paid out 
their strength to the limit in a war which they imperfectly 
understood. On his visits abroad, a civilian from home, Stim- 
son learned from every man he met that they were the most 
homesick troops in the world, and he knew how they felt, for 
twenty-five years before, with all the advantage in spirit of a 
volunteer catching up with twenty years of military hopes, he 
had felt exactly the same way. 

For if there was one conviction deeper than another in the 
hearts of these soldiers, it was the belief behind each soldier's 
uniform that he was an individual to whom life offered spe- 
cial values. Thoughtless or thoughtful, ignorant or profoundly 
aware, schooled to the discipline of war and its terror or let off 
easily with work far from the enemy and free from danger, 
these men were individuals, and they knew it. 

And the Army knew it, too. When first sergeants groaned 
about paper work and critics jeered at the administrative 
overhead of the Army, did they remember how much this 
burden was the product of the Army's recognition of the sol- 
dier as a unique man and a citizen? Allotments and insurance, 
point scores and specialties, mail service and the Red Cross, 
courts-martial, and inspectors general, chaplains and psychia- 
trists, all were the Army's instruments for wrestling with its 
colossal problem to. build and maintain a fighting machine 
composed of individuals. 

In this task, of course, the most important tool was leader- 
ship. It was one of the regrets of Stimson's service as Secretary 
of War that he did not see more of the junior officers of the 
Army, the men from second lieutenant to colonel who led the 
troops in the field. Their record spoke for itself, and having 
served one war earlier in this echelon, Stimson knew well the 



THE LAST MONTH 659 

magnitude of their accomplishment These leaders, targets for 
the hasty abuse of all who disliked military authority, had suc- 
cessfully faced the great and challenging task of commanding 
men whom they could and should know as individuals. 

The men whom Stimson was able to meet personally were 
mainly at a higher rank, starting with commanders of divi- 
sions and corps. This was the critical level of professional 
competence. Here it was required that the Army find men in 
considerable numbers equipped to handle arms and services 
in effective combination. More than that, it was necessary that 
these men be able to operate under constantly changing higher 
commanders and, in the case of corps commanders, with 
constantly shifting subordinate formations for it was a major 
element of the high commander's strength that he should be 
able to regroup his forces rapidly in accordance with a chang- 
ing situation. This required a uniformly first-rate set of com- 
manders. And such commanders were found. Stimson knew 
well how stern and trying had been the continuing problem of 
command at these middle levels in previous wars. No part of 
the Army's achievement in World War II impressed him 
more than its success in producing fighting major generals. On 
the leadership and professional skill of these men, of whom 
few received the public attention they deserved, rested much 
of the achievement of still higher commanders. 

Yet the high command in the field well deserved such sub- 
ordinates, and Stimson fully shared the nation's pride in Mac- 
Arthur, Eisenhower, Devers, Bradley, Hodges, Patton, Clark, 
Krueger, Patch, Eichelberger, Simpson, and Stilwell. All of 
them he knew; lie might have written for each one a personal 
citation of assessment and honor. But the important thing 
about these men was not their quality as individuals but rather 
that the Army met its greatest test with such a group of lead- 
ers. As individuals they needed no praise from Stimson. As a 
group they were proud proof that the American Army could 
produce field leaders of the highest caliber. 

Supporting the field forces were supply commanders over- 
seas and at home. The accomplishments of these men were of 
particular interest to Stimson. A Secretary of War could only 
watch in delighted admiration while General Patton set his 



660 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

tanks to run around in France "like bedbugs in a Georgetown 
kitchen." The problems of supply he could see more directly, 
for many of them came right back to him and to his immediate 
subordinates. From General Somervell downward, the supply 
officers of the Army seemed to him the worthy teammates of 
the field command ; it was they who translated the prodigious 
economic strength of America into a new way of war which 
combined mobility with materiel so effectively that field cam- 
paigns were regularly and decisively won without troop su- 
periority. 

At all echelons was the staff. The staff work of the Ameri- 
can Army came of age in World War II. What brilliant 
individuals had done in earlier wars was done this time by 
thousands of officers trained in the maturing tradition of 
Leavenworth. Nearly half a century before, Stimson had heard 
about staff work when it was only a bright idea in the minds of 
a few farsighted men led by Elihu Root. In World War I he 
had himself taken staff training at a time when many senior 
officers were still skeptical. The Army of his last five years in 
office had mastered the concept. Stimson felt safe in leaving the 
record of staff officers to the commanders ; rare was the general 
who had been successful without superior staff work. 

His own thoughts turned particularly to the staff in Wash- 
ington. On the day before he retired he called three hundred 
of them together in order that he might pay his personal trib- 
ute to their work. Their vision, their insistence on teamwork, 
their ability to merge the individual interests of all arms and 
services in the great over-all mission of furnishing maximum 
fighting power to the front these talents, applied with su- 
perior devotion to duty, in the face of the natural eagerness of 
the soldier for field assignment, had combined to produce staff 
work far better than that of the German and Japanese high 
commands. 

And then there was his own civilian staff. Stimson himself 
wrote the citation for awards of the Distinguished Service 
Medal to Patterson, McCloy, Lovett, and Bundy. Their serv- 
ices to the Army and the nation were clear without further 
comment -from him; so was the accomplishment of other close 
associates Dorr, Harrison, Martyn, and Bowles. But again 



THE LAST MONTH 661 

it was as a group that he thought these men important. These 
were men who put the job ahead of themselves and the com- 
mon interest ahead of special pleading. What they had meant 
to Stimson himself he could not trust himself to put on paper. 
Whatever he had been able to do he had done with their de- 
voted help. 

Yet he knew that they joined with him in the firm convic- 
tion that the work of the Army in the war was essentially a 
record of the quality of the American Army officer. On Sep- 
tember 20 he called to his office his civilian staff and a dozen of 
the senior War Department general officers, and he spoke 
informally in tribute to them all; his remarks to the soldiers 
were remembered and later reported by McCloy in a form that 
Stimson was proud to take as his own : 

"Through these years I have heavily depended upon my 
civilian staff, but they and I know that it is to the work, 
thought, and devotion to duty you men have displayed that we 
owe the victory. You have lived up to the exacting standards 
of personal integrity and constant application which I first 
came to know and appreciate when I was formerly Secretary 
of War. You and those whom you represent have shown your- 
selves brave but not brutal, self-confident but not arrogant, and 
above all, you have prepared, guided, and wielded the mighty 
power of this great country to another victory without the loss 
of our liberties or the usurpation of any power." 1 

Though his own training and fighting had been as a ground 
soldier, the Army for which Stimson was Secretary was an 
Army which included the Air Forces, and he did not 
forget it. Had he been minded to take part in the pointless dis- 
cussion as to who won the war, he could have argued as heart- 
ily for the fliers as for any single group. It seemed wiser to 
say simply that the Air Forces performed with magnificent 
courage and skill, under the imaginative and forceful direc- 
tion of a splendid group of officers. Their commanding gen- 
eral, Henry H. Arnold, was a man for whom Stimson felt a 
special regard. He had shown vision combined with loyalty, 
force combined with tact, and a comprehension of the larger 
issues of strategy which gave his word great weight in the 

1 John J. McCloy, "In Defense of the Army Mind," Harper's Magazine, April, 1947. 



662 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

councils of the War Department, and in the Joint and Com- 
bined Chiefs of Staff. In 1947 the Air Forces, full grown and 
eager for autonomy, separated from the Army. Stimson be- 
lieved that under Lovett and Arnold this strapping young 
giant had learned well to fly alone. 

2. THE CHIEF OF STAFF 

The civilians might bow to the soldiers, and the soldiers to 
the civilians, the commanders might give honor to their 
troops, and the nation might give rousing greeting to return- 
ing generals, but to Stimson the greatness of the American 
Army of World War II was the projection of the greatness 
of George C. Marshall, and in the last weeks of his service he 
did what he could to make this opinion clear. 

Marshall's professional skill was written in history. "His 
mind has guided the grand strategy of our campaigns. ... It 
was his mind and character that carried through the trans- 
Channel campaign against Germany. . . . Similarly his views 
have controlled the Pacific campaign although there he has 
been most modest and careful in recognizing the role of the 
Navy. His views guided Mr. Roosevelt throughout. 

"The construction of the American Army has been entirely 
the fruit of his initiative and supervision. Likewise its train- 
ing. As a result we have had an army unparalleled in our his- 
tory with a high command of supreme and uniform excel- 
lence. . . . With this Army we have won a most difficult dual 
war with practically no serious setbacks and astonishingly 
'according to plan.' The estimate of our forces required has 
been adequate and yet not excessive. For instance, Marshall 
estimated against the larger estimates of others [including 
Stimson] that eighty-nine American divisions would suffice. 
On the successful close of the war, all but two of these divi- 
sions had been committed to action in the field. His timetables 
of the successive operations have been accurate and the 
close of the war has been ultimately achieved far sooner than 
most of us had anticipated. 

"Show me any war in history which has produced a general 



THE LAST MONTH 663 

with such a surprisingly perfect record as his in this greatest 
and most difficult war of all history." 2 

But mere professional skill would hardly have won General 
Marshall his outstanding position. He had in addition shown 
the greatest of force in advocacy, combined with a continual 
insistence on unity. 

u From the very beginning, he insisted on unity between the 
services and among our allies. He realized that only by this 
means could our combined resources be employed to the full- 
est advantage against the enemy. To achieve wholehearted co- 
operation, he was always willing to sacrifice his own personal 
prestige. To him agreement was more important than any 
consideration of where the credit belonged. His firm belief 
that unity could be preserved in the face of divergent opinions 
was a decisive factor in planning throughout the war." 

And the whole had been founded on the rock of character. 

"General Marshall's leadership takes its authority directly 
from his great strength of character. I have never known a 
man who seemed so surely to breathe the democratic Ameri- 
can spirit. He is a soldier, and yet he has a profound distaste 
for anything that savors of militarism. He believes that every 
able-bodied citizen has a personal responsibility for the na- 
tion's security and should be prepared to assume that respon- 
sibility whenever an emergency arises. But he is opposed to a 
large standing Army as un-American. 

"His trust in his commanders is almost legendary. During 
the critical period of the Ardennes break-through no messages 
went from the War Department to General Eisenhower 
which would require his personal decision and reply. This is 
standard practice with General Marshall. When one of his 
commanders is in a tight spot, he does everything possible to 
back him up. But he leaves the man free to accomplish his 
purpose unhampered. 

"He is likewise the most generous of men, keeping himself 
in the background so that his subordinates may receive all 
credit for duties well done. 

"His courtesy and consideration for his associates, of what- 
ever rank, are remarked by all who know him. His devotion 

2 Letter to President Truman, September 18, 1945. 



664 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

to the nation he serves is a vital quality which infuses every- 
thing he does. During the course of a long lifetime, much of it 
spent in positions of public trust, I have had considerable ex- 
perience with men in Government. General Marshall has 
given me a new gauge of what such service should be. The 
destiny of America at the most critical time of its national 
existence has been in the hands of a great and good citizen. Let 
no man forget it. 7 ' 3 

What it meant to Stimson personally to serve with such a 
man he had tried to express before a small gathering of War 
Department leaders on VE-day. 

"I want to acknowledge my great personal debt to you, sir, 
in common with the whole country. No one who is thinking 
of himself can rise to true heights. You have never thought of 
yourself. Seldom can a man put aside such a thing as being the 
commanding general of the greatest field army in our history. 
This decision was made by you for wholly unselfish reasons. 
But you have made your position as Chief of Staff a greater 
one. I have never seen a task of such magnitude performed by 
man. 

"It is rare in late life to make new friends ; at my age it is a 
slow process but there is no one for whom I have such deep 
respect and I think greater affection. 

"I have seen a great many soldiers in my lifetime and you, 
sir, are the finest soldier I have ever known." 

3. THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF 

One other name must be remembered in the Army's roll of 
honor for superb achievement in World War II. Stimson 
could not pretend to give a final judgment on the total labor 
of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he was wholly certain that the 
Army had never had a finer Commander in Chief. In the tur- 
bulence of the war years there were many incidents on which 
Stimson and his President disagreed ; the significant ones have 
been recorded in previous chapters. But throughout that 
period Stimson never wavered in his admiration for Mr. 
Roosevelt's great qualities, and his affection for the man who 

3 Press conference, September 19, 1945. 



THE LAST MONTH 665 

carried his burdens with such buoyant courage constantly in- 
creased. Against the great human leadership of the President 
minor differences and difficulties became insignificant, and 
Stimson, who did not hesitate to disagree with the President, 
never concealed his contempt for those who had allowed years 
of disagreement to ripen into general bitterness. Speaking at 
a Harvard commencement on June 11, 1942, he went out of 
his way to speak of Mr. Roosevelt to an audience which he 
suspected might contain a number of full-blown Roosevelt- 
haters. 

"I think it is appropriate that here at the home of his Alma 
Mater I should say a word as to the leadership of that Har- 
vard man who is the Commander in Chief of this great Army. 
It has been my privilege to observe him in time of conference 
and of crisis and of incessant strain and burden, of which he 
has cheerfully borne by far the heaviest share. His clarity of 
foresight and his unfailing grasp of the essential strategic fac- 
tors of a world-wide struggle, you have all been able to follow. 
But only those who have been his lieutenants in the struggle 
can know the close personal attention with which he has vital- 
ized every important decision. And only they can fully appre- 
ciate the courage and determination he has shown in time of 
threatened disaster, or the loyalty and consideration by which 
he has won the support of all of his war associates. Out of 
these characteristics comes the leadership which will achieve 
the final victory." 

This opinion was reinforced during the next three years, 
and as he wrote for his diary on April i$, 1945, a summary of 
his feelings about Mr. Roosevelt, Stimson found that in the 
retrospect of nearly five years, "the importance of his 
leadership and the strong sides of his character loom up into 
their rightful proportions. He has never been a good adminis- 
trator and the consequence of this has made service under him 
as a Cabinet officer difficult and often harassing for he has 
allowed himself to become surrounded by a good many men of 
small caliber who were constantly making irritating and 
usually selfish emergencies. But his vision over the broad 
reaches of events during the crises of the war has always been 
vigorous and quick and clear and guided by a very strong 



666 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

faith in the future of our country and of freedom, democracy, 
and humanitarianism throughout the world. Furthermore, on 
matters of military grand strategy, he has nearly always been 
sound and he has followed substantially throughout with great 
fidelity the views of his military and naval advisers. In the 
Army on no important occasion has he ever intervened with 
personal or political desires in the appointment of command- 
ers. He has always been guided in this respect by the views of 
the Staff and myself. The Staff has recommended to him many 
thousands of general officers and he has accepted their selec- 
tions practically without exception. I can only remember one 
or two where he has insisted upon appointments according to 
his own views and those were of minor importance. In these 
last respects I think he had been without exception the best 
war President the United States has ever had. . . . On the 
whole he has been a superb war President far more so than 
any other President of our history. His role has not at all been 
merely a negative one. He has pushed for decisions of sound 
strategy and carried them through against strong opposition 
from Churchill, for example, and others. The most notable 
instance was where he accepted the views of our Staff in re- 
gard to the final blow at Germany across the Channel. . . . 
That was a great decision." 

To Stimson personally the President's kindness and courtesy 
were unfailing. The two men had always been friendly, but 
Stimson knew that on his- side at least the years of crisis and 
war had produced a feeling that far exceeded anything based 
merely on the official relations of a Cabinet officer to his chief. 
It might be irritating that Mr. Roosevelt was so good a talker 
that his Secretary of War was proud when he could claim to 
have been given 40 per cent of the time of their meetings for 
his own pearls of wisdom but the President's talk was almost 
always heart-warming. And in dozens of little ways, with mes- 
sages and personal notes, and Cabinet badinage, the two men, 
so different in many ways, showed each other their mutual 
respect and affection. 

On the whole, Stimson was content to stand, in his judgment 
of President Roosevelt, on a letter written just after his death: 



THE LAST MONTH 667 

April 1 6, 1945 
My dear Mrs. Roosevelt: 

The sudden breaking off of the official ties which I have 
enjoyed with your husband and with you is a very great shock 
and grief to me. In the midst of it I find it very difficult to 
adequately express the affection and honor which I have held 
for you both. I have never received from any chief, under 
whom I have served, more consideration and kindness than I 
did ^f rom him, even when he was laboring under the terrific 
strain of a great war and in spite of the fact that I was a new- 
comer in his Cabinet and a member of another party. He thus 
made natural and easy relations which might otherwise have 
been difficult. Out of these his characteristics grew the very 
real and deep affection which I came to have for him. 

He was an ideal war Commander in Chief. His vision of 
the broad problems of the strategy of the war was sound and 
accurate, and his relations to his military advisers and com- 
manders were admirably correct. In the execution of their 
duties he gave them freedom, backed them up, and held them 
responsible. In all these particulars he seems to me to have 
been our greatest war President. And his courage and cheer- 
iness in times of great emergency won for him the loyalty and 
affection of all who served under him. 

Lastly and most important, his vision and interpretations of 
the mission of our country to help establish a rule of freedom 
and justice in this world raised a standard which put the 
United States in the unique position of world leadership 
which she now holds. Such facts must constitute priceless 
memories to you now in your sad bereavement. You may well 
hold your head high to have been his worthy helpmate at such 
a time and in such a task. 

With very deep respect and affection, I am 

Very sincerely yours, 
HENRY L. STIMSON 

4. THE END 

With such memories of the men with whom he had served, 
Stimson prepared to leave Washington. Twice before he had 



668 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

left Cabinet office, each time convinced that he would not re- 
turn. This was the third strike, and he was surely out now. But 
where before he had left with defeated administrations, to be 
sure with few regrets and no bitterness, now he was leaving at 
the triumphant climax of five years which had been "the high 
point of my experience, not only because of the heavy respon- 
sibility of guiding the nation's military establishment, but be- 
cause of the opportunity they offered me to serve the nation 
in a great war. I shall always be grateful to Mr. Roosevelt for 
giving me that opportunity." 4 

On the twenty-first of September he went as usual to 
the War Department. There were still one or two letters to be 
signed and a few appointments to be kept. In the middle of 
the morning the members of his civilian staff came in to give 
him a silver tray in token of farewell. A little later he had a 
last talk with General Marshall. At twelve-thirty he went to 
lunch as usual in the General Officers' Mess and was there 
greeted by an enormous birthday cake the Army had always 
remembered his birthdays. After lunch he went to keep an 
appointment at the White House and found that the President 
had sent for him to present him with the Distinguished Serv- 
ice Medal "as Secretary of War from the beginning of the 
actual mobilization of the Army to the final victory over 
Japan, Henry Lewis Stimson gave the United States of Amer- 
ica a measure of distinguished service exceptional in the his- 
tory of the nation. . . ." 

Then he attended his last Cabinet meeting. 

"Immediately after the Cabinet meeting I said good-by to 
the President and to the Cabinet and hurried away to the Pen- 
tagon Building where I picked up Mabel and Colonel Kyle 
[his aide] who were waiting for me there and went to the 
Washington Airport. There to my surprise was a huge meet- 
ing of apparently all the general officers in Washington, lined 
up in two rows, together with my immediate personal civilian 
staff. It was a very impressive sight and a complete surprise 
to me. These men had been standing there for an hour because 
the time of my departure was supposed to have been at three 
o'clock, and the Cabinet meeting had lasted so long that I did 

4 Press conference, September 19, 1945. 



THE LAST MONTH 669 

not get there until four o'clock. The nineteen-gun salute was 
given as Mabel and I reached the two lines of generals and 
the band played 'Happy Birthday' and Auld Lang Syne.' 
Then after waving a general good-by and salute to the whole 
lines that we passed, I shook hands with Marshall and the top 
commanders at the end of the line and with my own civilian 
staff, and Mabel and I entered the plane together and took off 
for home." 



AFTERWORD 



book has recorded forty years spent largely in public 
life; from this record others may draw their own conclu- 
sions, but it seems not unreasonable that I should myself set 
down in a few words my own summing up. 

Since 1906 the problems of our national life have expanded 
in scope and difficulties beyond anything we ever dreamed of 
in those early times. It is a far cry from the problems of a 
young district attorney to the awesome questions of the atomic 
age. 

Yet I do not wish that the clock could be turned back. 
Neither a man nor a nation can live in the past. We can go only 
once along a given path of time and we can only face in one 
direction, forward. 

No one can dispute the progress made by the man of today 
from the prehistoric man mentally, morally, and spiritually. 
No one can dispute the humanitarian progress made more 
recently, since those times before the age of steam and elec- 
tricity, when man's growth was limited by sheer starvation, 
and the law of Malthus was an immediate reality. 

It is true that the record of my own activity inevitably in- 
cludes my conviction that in the last forty years the peoples 
and nations of the world have made many terrible mistakes; it 
is a sad thing that mdre than half of such a book as this 
should have to be devoted to the problem of warmaking. Yet 
even so, it is well also to reflect how much worse the state of 
mankind would be if the victorious peoples in each of the 
two world wars had not been willing to undergo the sacrifices 
which were the price of victory. I have always believed that 
the long view of man's history will show that his destiny on 
earth is progress toward the good life, even though that prog- 
ress is based on sacrifices and sufferings which taken by them- 
selves seem to constitute a hideous melange of evils. 

This is an act of faith. We must not let ourselves be en- 

6 77 



672 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

gulfed in the passing waves which obscure the current of 
progress. The sinfulness and weakness of man are evident to 
anyone who lives in the active world. But men are also good 
and great, kind and wise. Honor begets honor; trust begets 
trust; faith begets faith; and hope is the mainspring of life. 
I have lived with the reality of war, and I have praised sol- 
diers; but the hope of honorable faithful peace is a greater 
thing and I have lived with that, too. That a man must live 
with both together is inherent in the nature of our present 
stormy stage of human progress, but it has also many times 
been the nature of progress in the past, and it is not reason for 
despair. 

I think the record of this book also shows my deep convic- 
tion that the people of the world and particularly our own 
American people are strong and sound in heart. We have been 
late in meeting danger, but not too late. We have been wrong 
but not basically wicked. And today with that strength and 
soundness of heart we can meet and master the future. 

Those who read this book will mostly be younger than I, men 
of the generations who must bear the active part in the work 
ahead. Let them learn from our adventures what they can. 
Let them charge us with our failures and do better in their 
turn. But let them not turn aside from what they have to do, 
nor think that criticism excuses inaction. Let them have hope, 
and virtue, and let them believe in mankind and its future, 
for there is good as well as evil, and the man who tries to work 
for the good, believing in its eventual victory, while he may 
suffer setback and even disaster, will never know defeat. The 
only deadly sin I know is cynicism. 

HENRY L. STIMSON 



A NOTE OF EXPLANATION AND 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 



SINCE this book is rather unusual in its form, some explana- 
tion of the method of its construction may be of value to 
careful readers and students. 

Although it is written in the third person, the book has no 
other aim than to present the record of Mr. Stimson's public 
life as he himself sees it. It is an attempt to substitute a joint 
effort for the singlehanded autobiography he might have un- 
dertaken if he were a little younger. It follows that we have 
made no effort at an external assessment, and in the writing I 
have sought not to intrude any views of my own, but rather 
to present Mr. Stimson's actions as he himself understands 
them. Thus objective praise and blame are equally absent; and 
for the latter, I fear, another student altogether will be neces- 
sary. 

The major sources of the book are two : Mr. Stimson him- 
self and his records. If I have held the laboring oar, Mr. Stim- 
son has held the tiller rope, and the judgments and opinions 
expressed are always his. We have however tried to make a 
clear distinction between his views as they were during any 
given period and his present opinions, and wherever memory 
or desire has conflicted with the written record, we have 
followed the record. 

The most important written record of Mr. Stimson's public 
life is his diary. It begins in 1910, but until 1930 it was not kept 
from day to day; entries were made only as time and inclina- 
tion permitted. The first passages are a short undated descrip- 
tion of the Saratoga Convention of 1910 and a long account of 
the period May, 1911 to March, 1913, written in the spring 
of the latter year. The diary continues with sporadic entries 
between 1915 and 1926. There is a separate manuscript volume 
containing entries made by Lieutenant Colonel Stimson over- 
seas in 1918. The Nicaraguan episode and the Philippine year 

673 



674 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

are both covered by separate volumes of almost daily notes 
and comment. But the first eighteen months of Mr. Stimson's 
term as Secretary of State have unfortunately no diary, though 
a short summary of this period was written in August, 1930. 

It is in September, 1930 that the daily diary begins. In that 
month Mr. Stimson acquired a dictaphone which he kept at 
his home in Washington, and the diary contains an entry for 
very nearly every day in which he held public office from that 
time forward, whether he was in Washington or traveling 
abroad. In most cases these entries were made the same day or 
early the following morning. Very occasionally a period of 
two or three days passed before the entry could be dictated. 
The average daily entry is two or three typewritten pages in 
length, but on important occasions there are as many as ten. 
The diary for the last thirty months of the State Department 
years fills eleven bound volumes; that of the period 1940 to 
1945 fills twenty. There are three volumes of occasional entries 
covering the period 1933 to 1940. 

For the periods it fully covers, the diary is the basic docu- 
ment; it shows what was really in Mr. Stimson's mind at any 
given time as no files or correspondence can do. In studying 
the. work of a modern public servant, whose signature must 
appear on thousands of documents each year, it is often im- 
portant to know what he merely approved and what was a part 
of his own personal activity. The diary serves as an invaluable 
check on this point. It also contains expressions of opinion 
which did not find their way into any official documents or 
public statements. 

The diary has been liberally quoted, and wherever the date 
of an entry is of any significance, it is given. Omissions are in- 
dicated by the usual dots; in most cases the omissions are 
merely for brevity; in a few, they involve comments or expres- 
sions which Mr. Stimson does not now wish to publish, either 
because he no longer agrees with himself or because they 
might cause unnecessary pain to men who were his associates 
and are his friends. One or two alterations have been made in 
order to clarify confusing entries, and these are noted with the 
usual brackets. And since the diary was typed from a dicta- 
phone record, we have felt free to make occasional changes in 



EXPLANATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT 675 

punctuation and spelling. But in general, the diary text is as- 
tonishingly clean and clear, and the changes we have made are 
no more than elementary copyreading. We have made no ef- 
fort to edit away the informal and conversational style of the 
usual entry. 

Supplementing the diary, and serving as a substitute in those 
periods which are not covered by a daily record, are Mr. 
Stimson's papers reports, speeches, books, memoranda, and 
correspondence. These have been extensively studied but I 
cannot claim to have "exhausted the material"; lawyers do 
not throw things away, and only the intelligent and sympa- 
thetic help of Miss Elizabeth Neary, Mr. Stimson's personal 
secretary, has made it possible for me to find my way in rea- 
sonable order through his papers. These materials too have 
been freely quoted in the text, and the source given wherever 
it seemed relevant. 

In addition to the personal records, I have of course made 
extensive use of published materials dealing with events in 
which Mr. Stimson had a part. No bibliography is given, 
since these volumes usually have been consulted only to give 
me a working familiarity with matters with which Mr. Stim- 
son was already intimately acquainted. But where these books, 
magazines, and newspapers are quoted, due acknowledgment 
is made, and we are indebted to all the publishers who have 
permitted quotation, both of other writings and of Mr. Stim- 
son's own published work. 

An even more important source of help has been the advice 
and comment of many of Mr. Stimson's intimate associates 
and colleagues. These men have had the kindness to read parts 
of the manuscript, and to their comments we owe many a cor- 
rection and addition. Since most of them are men whose work 
is praised by Mr. Stimson in the text, I will not embarrass 
them by listing their names; it is fair to note, however, that 
almost without exception they have asked to have their own 
work minimized. 

We owe a particular debt to the Department of the Army, 
whose officers have read and cleared Part III as free from 
violations of military security. We are still more in the debt 
of Dr. Rudolph A. Winnacker, without whose generous help 



676 ON ACTIVE SERVICE 

this part of the book could hardly have been written at all. Dr. 
Winnacker's basic historical studies of the work of the Office 
of the Secretary of War broke the back of the job of getting a 
connected record of Mr. Stimson's activities between 1940 
and 1945. His rounded study of the whole wartime work of 
the War Department's civilian leaders will contain much 
about Mr. Stimson which lack of space has forced us to omit, 
and a great deal more of the work of associates, which has not 
come within the scope of this book. 

The making of a book involves many problems with which 
neither Mr. Stimson nor I was familiar when we began to 
work, and we have been greatly assisted by the sympathetic 
counsel of Mr. Stimson's old friend, associate, and neighbor 
Arthur W. Page. We have also had the constant co-operation 
of Mr. Cass Canfield and the experienced staff of Harper and 
Brothers. And there are many others who will note that in one 
place or another the book has taken a shape that marks our 
effort to follow their advice. 

The final and fundamental source of the book, however, is 
Mr. Stimson himself. I have spent most of the last eighteen 
months as his guest, and daily we have met to work together. 
At first we simply talked for hours on end. Later, as I began 
to work with the written records, each point of interest was 
referred to Mr. Stimson, and all questions of meaning and 
emphasis were worked out together. The outline of each chap- 
ter was the product of joint consideration, and every section 
of the book, in its several drafts, has been read by Mr. Stim- 
son and revised to meet his criticisms. From our discussions 
have come many observations and recollections which I have 
quoted, but in order to set off these remembered comments 
from passages found in contemporary written records, I have 
in these cases used the single and not the double quotation 
mark. 

In every important sense, then, this is Mr. Stimson's book. 
It is his experience and his reflections which have informed 
its every page. In the nature of things, the responsibility for 
errors of fact and deficiencies of style is mine, but even in 
these areas his close attention to detail and his mastery of clear 
English have prevented many mistakes. 



EXPLANATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT 677 

I must take this opportunity of expressing my indebtedness 
to the Senior Fellows of the Society of Fellows of Harvard 
University, who encouraged me to undertake this work under 
my appointment as a Junior Fellow. I have a special obliga- 
tion also to Mr. John Finley, the Master of Eliot House, for 
his kindness in giving me "a room of one's own' 7 when I have 
been in Cambridge. To be a Junior Fellow and a member of 
Eliot House is to enjoy an opportunity for undisturbed work 
and enlightening company which is not, in these postwar days, 
the general lot of students. 

But of course my principal personal indebtedness is to Mr. 
and Mrs. Stimson, whose kindness and generosity, added to 
the intrinsic and absorbing interest of the task, have made this 
year and a half a landmark in my life. 

MCGEORGE BUNDY 



BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF 
WORLD WAR II 



This brief chronological listing of outstanding events is included as a guide 
for those readers who may be interested in checking Mr. Stimson's war 
service against the progress of the war at any given time. The listing makes 
no pretense of completeness and aims rather to reconstruct something of the 
headline atmosphere of those years. 



1939 September i 

3 
November 4 



1940 March 
April 
May 



June 



30 
12 

9 
10 

ii 

14-16 

28 

29 

10 

14 
17 

22 

24 



September 3 
15 

16 
27 

October 28 
November 5 
December 14 
1941 March n 
April 3 



Germany invades Poland 

France and Great Britain declare war on Germany 

United States modifies Neutrality Act to permit 
cash-and-carry trade with belligerents 

Russia invades Finland 

Russo-Finnish war ends 

Germany invades Denmark and Norway 

Germany invades Holland, Belgium, and Luxem- 
bourg 

Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the 
United Kingdom 

Germans break through French lines at Sedan 

Belgian King surrenders 

Retreat from Dunkirk begins 

Italy declares war on France and Great Britain 

Paris falls to Germans 

Petain asks for an armistice 

France surrenders 

Opening of Republican Convention which nominates 
Wendell Willkie for President 

Destroyer Deal announced 

British shoot down 175 German planes in Battle of 
Britain 

Selective Service Act of 1940 is signed 

Japan, Germany, and Italy sign Tri-Partite Pact 
aimed at United States 

Italy invades Greece 

Franklin Roosevelt re-elected President 

British victory over Italians in Egypt 

Lend-Lease Act signed 

Axis forces defeat British in North Africa 
679 



68o 



ON ACTIVE SERVICE 



1941 April 





18 




27 


May 


29 

20 


June 


27 
I 




22 


July 


7 




24 
26 


August 


9- 




12 


September 


II 


October 
November 


19 
17 




19 
26 




27 


December 


7 




8 




ii 



1942 January 



1 1 
22 



2 
2 



February 


15 


March 


6 




17 


April 


8 




9 




18 


May 


6 




6-8 




8 




30 



Germany attacks Yugoslavia and joins in war on 

Greece 

Yugoslavian Army surrenders 
Athens falls 

British withdraw from Greece 
Germans execute air-borne invasion of Crete 
German battleship Bismarck sunk 
Crete conquered 
Germany attacks Russia 
United States troops land in Iceland 
Japan occupies southern Indo-China 
United States freezes Japanese assets 
9-12 Atlantic Charter meeting 

House extends Selective Service, 203202 
President announces shoot-on-sight order to Atlantic 

naval forces 

Moscow in state of siege 

Neutrality Act amended to permit American mer- 
chant ships to carry arms to Allies 
Second British offensive in Libya begins 
Secretary Hull restates American position to Jap- 
anese emissaries 

War and Navy Departments send warnings of im- 
minent war to Pacific commanders 
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, declaring war on 

United States and Great Britain 
United States and Great Britain declare war on Japan 
Germany and Italy declare war on the United States 
and United States recognizes state of war with 
these countries 

Japanese land in the Philippines 
Winston Churchill arrives in Washington for first 

allied war council 
Japanese enter Manila 
"Declaration by United Nations" signed at White 

House 

Singapore falls 
Batavia, Java, falls 

General MacArthur arrives in Australia 
Second Axis offensive begins in Libya 
Bataan falls 

Carrier-based Army bombers raid Tokyo 
General Wainwright surrenders on Corregidor 
Battle of the Coral Sea 
Germans begin second Russian campaign 
First British xooo-bomber raid on Germany 



BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD WAR II 



681 



1942 June 



July 

August 



November 



December 
1943 January 



4-7 Battle of Midway 
1 8 Winston Churchill arrives in Washington for second 

allied war council 
21 Tobruk falls to Axis; Rommel enters Egypt 

I Germans capture Sevastopol 

7 Marines land at Guadalcanal 

9 Battle of Savo Island 

17 First independent United States bombing attack in 

Europe 

1 8 Canadians and British raid Dieppe 

4 British victory at Alamein in Egypt 

7 Anglo-American forces land in North Africa 
1215 Battle of Guadalcanal 

21 Russians begin great counteroffensive in Caucasus 
24 Darlan assassinated 

24 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill 

announce ten-day meeting of third allied war 
council at Casablanca the "unconditional sur- 
render" meeting 

31 Battle of Stalingrad ends in surrender of German 
Sixth Army 

14 Americans suffer setback at Kasserine Pass 
13 Battle of the Bismarck Sea 

29 British break through the Mareth line in Tunisia 

1 1 Prime Minister Churchill in Washington for fourth 
allied war council 

1 1 Americans land on Attu 

12 North African campaign concluded in great allied 

victory 

30 Americans land on Rendova 

10 Anglo-American forces land in Sicily 

25 Mussolini falls 

15 Allies land at Kiska and find no Japanese 

17 Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt 

meet in Quebec for fifth allied war council 
17 Sicilian campaign completed 
17 Eighth Air Force anniversary raid on Schweinfurt 

and Regensburg 
September 3 Allies invade Italy 

8 Italy surrenders 

9 Amphibious landing at Salerno, Italy 

1 6 Americans take Lae in New Guinea 
I Naples falls 

19 Moscow Conference of Foreign Secretaries begins 
I Marines land at Bougainville 

6 Red Army retakes Kiev 



February 
March 

May 



June 
July 

August 



October 
November 



682 



ON ACTIVE SERVICE 



1943 November 21 

22 
28 

December 15 
21 
29 

1944 January n 

22 



March 
April 

May 
June 

July 



October 



10 

22 

10 
II 
17 

4 
6 

15 

25 

3 

9 

20 



21 
25 

August 2 
3 

15 
25 

September 4 
II 
12 
13 



15 
17-28 

7 

20 
20 

23-26 
28 



Americans land on Tarawa and Makin in the Gil- 
bert Islands 
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and 

Generalissimo Chiang-kai-shek meet at Cairo 
President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and 

Marshal Stalin meet at Teheran 
Americans land at Arawe in New Britain 
Stilwell begins second Burma campaign 
Russians break through west of Kiev, entering 

Poland 
P re-invasion strategic air offensive from Britain 

begins 
Allies land at Nettuno-Anzio beachhead south of 

Rome 

Americans land in Marshall Islands 
Allies admit failure at Cassino in Italy 
Russians recapture Odessa 

Americans land at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea 
Russians recapture Sevastopol 
Allies renew Italian offensive 
Myitkyina airstrip captured 
Rome liberated 

Anglo-American forces land in Normandy 
Americans land in Saipan, in the Mariana Islands 
Cherbourg liberated 
Russians take Minsk 
British take Caen 
Hitler survives attempted assassination and coup 

d'etat 

Americans land on Guam 

American offensive begins at Avranches, Normandy 
Russians reach the Baltic Sea in Latvia 
Myitkyina falls 

Franco-American forces land in Southern France 
Paris liberated 
British free Brussels 
Americans free Luxembourg 
Americans enter Germany 
Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt 

meet at Quebec for seventh allied war council 
Marines land at Pelcliu 
Battle of Arnhcm 
Dumbarton Oaks Conference ends 
Americans return to the Philippines 
Red Army enters East Prussia 
Battle of Leyte Gulf 
General Stilwell recalled 



BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD WAR II 



683 



1944 November 7 
20 
24 

December 3 
16 
27 



J 945 January 9 
17 
February 4- 



March 



April 



May 

June 

July 



August 



19 

7 

21 

27 
I 
I 

9 
ii 

12 

17 
22 

25 

25 
I 
2 

8 

21 
26 

16 

17 



26 

26 

6 



9 
10 

14 

15 

September 2 



Franklin Roosevelt re-elected President 

Americans enter Metz 

Tokyo bombed by B-2Q bombers from Saipan 

Civil war in Greece 

German counteroffensive launched in the Ardennes 

Bastogne relieved 

Russian-sponsored Polish government set up in Lub- 
lin 

Americans land on Luzon 

Russians take Warsaw 

10 President Roosevelt, Generalissimo Stalin, and 
Prime Minister Churchill meet at Yalta in eighth 
war council 

Marines land on Iwo Jima 

At Remagen Americans capture bridgehead across 
Rhine 

British retake Mandalay 

Americans take Frankfurt 

Americanos land at Okinawa 

Double envelopment of Ruhr completed 

Russians take Vienna 

Americans reach the Elbe 

Franklin D. Roosevelt dies 

Americans take Nuremberg 

Red Army fighting in Berlin 

Russian and American troops meet at Torgau, Ger- 
many 

San Francisco Conference opens 

Death of Adolf Hitler 

Berlin falls 

V-E day 

Okinawa taken 

United Nations Charter signed at San Francisco 

Atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico 

President Truman, Prime Minister Churchill and 
Generalissimo Stalin meet at Potsdam in final 
war council 

The Potsdam Ultimatum issued to Japan 

Clement Attlee becomes British Prime Minister 

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 

Russia declares war on Japan 

Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki 

Japan sues for peace 

Japan accepts Allied terms 

V -J da y 

Japanese surrender signed on U.S.S. Missouri in 
Tokyo Bay 



INDEX 



Adams, General Charles F., 92 
Adams, Charles Francis, 166 
Aggressive war, crime of, 584-591 
Ainsworth, General Fred C., 33-37, 

452 

American Sugar Refining Co., prose- 
cution of, 8, 9-14 
Andrews, General Frank M., 407 
Andrews, Walter G., 377-378 
Antisubmarine war, lessons of, 508- 

518 

Argentina, 174, 178 

Army. See U. S. Army 

Army Specialized Training Program 
(ASTP), 457-461 

Army-Navy football game, 504-505, 
517-518 

Arnold, General Henry H., 415, 416, 
425, 5io, 515, 550, 661, 662 

Atlantic, battle of, 367-376 

Atlantic Charter, 565 

Atomic bomb, effect on Japanese sur- 
render, 628; making of, 612-617; 
New Mexico test, 625, 637; polit- 
ical meaning of, 635-638; use of in 
World War II, 629-633 ; use of in 
future, 634-636. See also names of 
countries 

Atomic energy, 468-469 

Austin, Warren, 482 

Austin-Wadsworth Bill, efforts in 
behalf of, 482-488 

Austria, 201, 567 

AVALANCHE (landing at Salerno), 
43i, 432 



Bacon, Robert, 91 

Balfour, Lord Arthur James, 251-252 



Balkans, invasion of contemplated, 

430, 434 

Ball, William S., 7 
Ballinger, Richard A., 19-21, 29 
Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, 19-21 
Baker, Newton D., 91, 93, 94, 130, 

246 

Bard, Ralph A., 616 ' 
Barker, Major General Ray W., 430, 

432 

Barkley, Alben W., 614 
Barnes, William", Jr., 63, 68-69, 75 
Baruch, Bernard, 354, 452, 494 
Baxter, James Phinney, 465 
Bennett, James Gordon, 14 
Bernays, Colonel, 585 
Biddle, Francis, 587 
Bird, Francis W., 7 
Bliss, Tasker, 557 
Bolivia, 174, 178 
BOLERO (building up American 

strength in England), 418-428, 437 
Bonaparte, Charles J., 18 
Borah, William E., 104, 213, 214, 

217, 273; letter to, 246, 248-255, 

256-257, 263 
Bowers, John M., 15 
Bowles, Dr. Edward L., 466, 468, 

510, 514, 660 

Brackett, Edgar, 69-71, 72, 75, 77 
Bradley, General Omar, 445 
Brandegee, Frank B., 104, 159 
Brandeis, Louis D., 20 
Brazil, 178, 179, 180, 187 
Brent, Charles H., 138 
Briand, Aristide, 170, 265, 273, 275 
Bridges, Styles, 614 
British Army, Stimson attached to, 96 
British Fleet, 318 



685 



686 



INDEX 



Brooke, Field Marshal Sir Alan 

Francis, 417, 439 
Bruening, Heinrich, 212, 270, 271, 

272, 277, 279 
Buckner, Emory R., 7 
Bundy, Harvey H., 193, 295, 343- 

344, 396, 465, 466, 641, 660 
Bundy, McGeorge, xi, 100, 673-677 
Burma, Stilwell's campaign in, 528- 

541 passim 
Bush, Dr. Vannevar, 465, 466, 514, 

612, 613, 614, 615, 616 
British Eighth Army, 427 
Byrnes, James F., 500, 616, 626, 627 

Cairo, conference at, 440, 443, 445 , 
446 

California, evacuation of Japanese 
from, 405-406 

Campbell, General, 452 

Canada, and destroyer deal with 
Great Britain, 358-359; vacations 
in, xvi ; work on atomic bomb, 614 

Canfield, Cass, 676 

Carr, Wilbur J., 193 

Casablanca, conference at, 428 

"Case of the Seventeen Holes," 10-14 

Castle, William R., 192, 193, 210 

Cement makers, defended against 
antitrust suit, 108, 109 

Chang, General, 232 

Chamberlain, Neville, 387 

Chamorro, President, 112 

Chanler, William, 587 

Chennault, General Claire, 534, 535, 
536, 537-538, 540 

Chiang Kai-shek, opposed to Stilwell, 
530, 53i, 532, 533, 535, 536, 537, 
539, 540 

Chiang, Kai-shek, Madame, 536 

Chicago Tribune, publishes secret war 
plans, 393 

Chile, 182 

China, dispute with Russia, 188-189; 
Japanese attack, 311-312, 384; Jap- 
anese invade Manchuria, 220-263 ; 



Shanghai incident, 239-243; and 
Stilwell, 528-541 passim; visit to, 

157 

Choate, Joseph H., 15, 1 6, 44 
Churchill, Winston, 166, 357, 5*3, 
533-534, 540, 556, 592, 608, 614; 
and Anglo-American strategy, 1941- 
1944, 413, 4i6, 419-420, 423-425, 
428-430, 436, 438-442, 446-448 ; on 
atomic bomb, 634 J and controversy 
over using Great Britain as base of 
operations, 413-448; and destroyer 
deal, 358; and Morgenthau plan, 
575, 576-577, 58i; visit to, 431- 

433 

Clark, Grenville, 323, 346, 348, 410, 
482 

Clark, J. Reuben, 184 

Clark, General Mark, 659 

Clarke, Mr., xviii 

Claudel, Paul, 206, 207, 256 

Clemenceau, Georges, 276 

Cleveland, Grover, xviii-xix, 298 

Coal operators, defended in law suit, 
108-109 

Colombia, 176, 182, 185 

Combined Chiefs of Staff, establish- 
ment of, 413-414, 417 

Communism, 653 ff. 

Compton, Dr. Karl T., 616 

Conant, Dr. James B., 465, 612, 613, 
615, 616 

Constitutional Convention. See New 
York 

Coolidge, Calvin, 124, 127, 129, 184; 
appoints Stimson Governor General 
of the Philippines, 116, 128; sends 
Stimson to Nicaragua, in; Stim- 
son meets, no-ni 

Coral Sea, battle of, 407 

Corregidor, surrender at, 405 

Cotton, Joseph P., 161, 174, 177, W- 
192, 193 

Coudert, Frederic R., 89 

Cox, James M., 105 

Craig, General Malin, 350 



INDEX 



687 



Credit- Anstalt, collapse of, 201-202 
Crim, John W. H., 7 
Croly, Herbert, 59, 62, 76 
Crowder, General Enoch, 34-35, 92, 

347 

Cuba, 181, 183, 185 
Customs service, report on, 12-14. 
Cutler, Robert, 340 

Darlan, Admiral, 542-545, 552 

Davies, Joseph P., 586 

Davis, Governor General, 149 

Davis, Colonel Benjamin O. } Jr., 463 

Davis, Dwight, 457 

Davis, Elmer, 497 

Davis, Norman, 310 

Dawes, Charles G., 165, 167, 202, 
229, 233, 234 

De Gaulle, Charles, 545-553, 560 

Deane, Colonel, 438 

Debuchi, Katsugi, 228 

Deming, Harold S., 7 

Denison, Winfred, 7 

Devers, General Jacob L., 431, 659 

Diaz, President, 112, 113, 114 

Dickinson, Jacob, 28 

Dill, Field Marshal Sir John, 414 

Disarmament, problem of in 1931 and 
1932, 265-281 

Dix, John A., 26, 28 

Dominican Republic, 184 

Donovan, General William, 455 

Doolittle raid, 405 

Dorr, Goldthwaite H., 7, 482, 660 

Douglas, Lewis W., 25 

Draft. See Selective Service System 

Draft Extension Act, battle over, 377- 
379. See also Selective Service Sys- 
tem 

Dykstra, Clarence, 347, 348 

Eberstadt, Ferdinand, 494 

Eden, Anthony, 257, 430, 433, 434, 

548 

Eichelberger, General Robert L., 659 
Eisenhower, General -Dwight D., 416, 



431, 433, 442, 443, 499, 543, 544, 
545, 566, 582, 659, 663; and De 
Gaulle, 549-550, 547-548, 551 J and 
military government in North 
Africa, 554, 555, 558 

Elections, of 1912, 48-55, 62; of 1916, 
88 ; of 1920, 104-107 ; of 1932, 282- 
288; of 1932, aftermath of, 288- 
296; of 1940, 335-336; of 1944, 
340; in liberated France, 548-549 

Ethiopia, betrayal of, 307 ; invasion 
of, 310-311 

Europe, 310, postwar need of help, 
590595 ; plan for reconstruction of, 

593-595, 653-654 

Executive budget, efforts in behalf of, 
72-73, 74, 107 

Far Eastern Crisis, 220-263 

Far Eastern Crisis, The, 22O, 222, 

227, 229, 234, 237, 239, 247, 297 
Fascism, 314-316 
Feis, Herbert, 193, 291 
Finland, Russian attack on, 317 
Finley, John, 677 
Fisher, Walter L., 29, 44 
Foch, General Ferdinand, 478 
Forbes, Cameron, 41, 122, 128, 149, 

184, 228 

Ford, Henry Jones, 62 
Foreign Affairs, articles in, 588-591, 

649-655 
Forrestal, James V., 354, 507, 519, 

523, 563 

Four-Power Treaty, 600 

Fox, Austen, 15 

France, Darlan affair, 542-545; deal- 
ings with De Gaulle, 545-553 ,' fall, 
541-544; fear of revolution in, 575- 
576; invasion of, and Anglo-Amer- 
ican strategy, 413-448; invasion of, 
1940, 3i7-3i8; liberated, 545-553 J 
London Naval Conference, 166, 
169-172; Manchurian crisis, 238; 
Nine-Power Treaty, 237; problem 
of disarmament, 265-281 passim ; 



688 



INDEX 



problem of war debts, 202-219 
passim ; three-power military under- 
standing proposed, 314-316; resi- 
dence in, 83; as soldier in, 95~99- 
See also Elections 

Franco, Francisco, 498 

Frankfurter, Felix, 7, 26, 161, 195, 
334; intermediary between Frank- 
lin D. Roosevelt and Stimson, 289- 
292 

Gallup Poll, on America's attitude 
toward war, April, 1941, 374~375 
Gann, Mrs., 159-160 
Garfield, James, 20, 31 
Garrison, Lindley, 54-55? 87, 88 
General Staff, battle for protection of, 

32-37, 38-39 

Geneva, Stimson at, 257 

George V, 167 

Germany, attacks Russia, 371, 383; 
attitude toward, 83-84; experi- 
ments on atomic weapon, 613; 
invasion of France, 1940, 3i7~3i8; 
pact with Russia, 316; postwar 
need of help, 593, 594 J problem of 
disarmament, 265-281 passim ; prob- 
lem of war debts, 201-219 passim] 
urges program of resistance to, 318- 
320 ; visit to, 270-272 ; war guilt of, 
World War I, 89-90; in World 
War I, 82-100 passim. See also 
Morgenthau plan, War criminals 

Gibson, Hugh, 167 

Gibson, Truman, 464 

Giraud, General Henri, 545 

Goethals, George W., 41 

Gompers, Samuel, 77 

Gorgas, William C, 557 

Govern, Hugh, Jr., 7 

Government, responsible, efforts in 
behalf of, 56-81 

Government service, dearth of first- 
rate men, 194-195 

Grandi, Count Dino, 268-269 

Great Britain, anti-submarine air op- 



erations of, 510; and atomic bomb, 
614, 645; and Burma, 528-529, 
533-534, 538, 539, 54O, 541 ; and 
China, 528, 529, 533-534, 538, 539* 
540; destroyer deal, 355~36o; Mor- 
genthau plan, 573, 574, 575, 576- 
577, 579, 58o, 581; passage of 
Lend-Lease Act, 360-363; post- 
war need of help, 592, 593 ; prob- 
lem of disarmament, 265-281 pas- 
sim] problem of war debts, 202- 
219 passim] Stimson urges U. S. 
support of, 1940, 318-320; three- 
power military understanding pro- 
posed, 314-316; U. S. aid to, 355- 
363 ; and U. S. war strategy, 1941- 
1944, 413-420, 423-426, 428-433, 
436-441, 445, 446-448. See also 
Atlantic, battle of; BOLERO; Lon- 
don Naval Conference 

Green, William, 354 

Grew, Joseph C., 619, 626 

Grey, Sir Edward, 306 

Grinnell, George Bird, xvi 

Groves, General Leslie R., 613, 614 

Guadalcanal, 407 

Gullion, General, 553-554 

Gurney, Chan, 519 

Guthrie, William D., 16 

GYMNAST. See TORCH 

Haiti, 182, 183, 184, 1 86 
Hamaguchi, Premier, 225 
Hammond, Lyman P., 141 
Harding, Warren G., 105-106, 107, 

122, 158, 353 
Harper's Magazine, article on atomic 

bomb, 612-613, 620-626, 627, 630, 

631-632, 633 

Harriman, Averell, 606, 641 
Harrison, Francis Burton, 12 1, 123, 

130, 133, 135 
Harrison, George L., 209, 616, 641, 

660. 

Harrison, Pat, 337 
Harvard Law School, xv-xvi 



INDEX 



689 



Harvey, George, 200 

Hawaii, attack on, 382-394 

Hay, John, 234, 237, 249-250, 254, 
2 5 6 

Hays, Will, 103 

Hearst, William Randolph, 8 

Hedges, Job, 27 

Henry, General Stephen G., 466-467 

Herriot, Edouard, 211-212, 217, 273, 
279, 552 

Hershey, General Lewis B., 347, 348, 
489 

Hewitt, Admiral Henry K., 505-506 

"Highhold," establishment of resid- 
ence at, xxii 

Hilldring, General John, 559, 560 

Hilles, Mr., 29, 30 

Hillman, Sidney, 354, 355, 488, 489 

Hindenburg, Paul von, 270 

Hiroshima, 625, 630 

Hitler, Adolf, 264, 270, 305, 306, 

589 
Hodges, General Courtney H., Jr., 

659 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 92, 590; 
visits to, 197-199 

Hoover, Herbert, 19, no, 191 ; after- 
math of election of 1932, 288-296; 
appoints Stimson Secretary of State, 
143, 155-158, 1 60, -election of 1932, 
282-288; Finnish relief, 317; and 
Latin America, 177, 181-183, 185- 
187; London Naval Conference, 
164, 165, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174; 
Ramsay MacDonald visits, 166; 
moratorium, 202-219, 273; and 
Philippines, 149; problem of dis- 
armament, 275, 276; Stimson 
guest of in White House, 161-162; 
temperament of, 195-197, 199-200 

Hopkins, Harry, 333-334, 373, 381, 
416, 417, 418, 424, 425, 434-435, 
471, 562, 568, 569, 570, 580 

Hornbeck, Stanley, 249 

.Howard, Mr., xviii 



Hughes, Charles Evans, 21, 26, 61, 
66, 88, 109-110, 158-159, 177, 179, 
237, 254, 256 

Hull, Cordell, 256, 310, 360, 382, 
399, 495, 517, 559, 595; aided by 
Stimson at London, 298 ; appointed 
Secretary of State, 294-295 ; at Cab- 
inet meetings, 562, 563 ; friendship 
with 332, 333; liberation of 
France, 541-553 passim; and mili- 
tary government, 554, 555; Mor- 
genthau plan, 569, 570, 575; Stim- 
son supports trade policy of, 298- 
301, 591; and strategy in Pacific 
before Pearl Harbor, 382-390 pas- 
sim ; on Supreme Court Bill of 

1937, 303-304 
Hurley, Patrick, 243, 244, 245, 247, 

538 
HUSKY (invasion of Sicily), 428, 429 

Iceland, occupation of, 372, 373 

Ickes, Harold, 333, 371 

India, Stilwell's campaign in, 528-541 
passim 

Isolationism, battle against, 307-309, 
312 

Italy, and disarmament, 266-270, 274; 
invaded, and Anglo-American strat- 
egy, 428, 429, 430, 431-432, 433, 
434, 436, 437; invades Ethiopia, 
310-311; London Naval Confer- 
ence, 166, 169-172; Manchuria 
crisis, 238; visit to, 268-270 

Iwo Jima, 620 

Jackson, Robert H., 333, 37*, 49O> 
587 

James, William, xv 

Japan, and atomic bomb, 618, 625- 
626; attack on China, 311-312; at- 
tack on Pearl Harbor, 382-394; 
conquest of Philippines, 395-405; 
embargo against, 384-385, 387; 
Emperor, 242, 626, 627, 628, 630, 
631 ; invasion of Manchuria, 220- 



690 



INDEX 



263 ; and League of Nations, 306 ; 

London Naval Treaty, 162-174; 

proposed program for, 620-624; 

Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1902 

hears tale of ambitions of, 301-302 ; 

Stimson foresees threat of, 306-307, 

311-312, 314; surrender of, 617, 

619, 627-629; visit to, 157; west- 

ernalization of, 222-223 
Japanese-Americans, evacuation of, 

405-406; troops, 406 
Jefferson, Thomas, 59, 60, 61, 178 
Johnson, Hiram, 104, 172, 236 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, organization of, 

414-415, 438, 515 
Jones Act, 118, 121, 122, 123, 125, 

129, 133-134, H9 
Jones, Jesse, 354 

Kamikaze, 618 
Kellogg, Frank B., no, 158 
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 158, 164, 188, 
189, 226, 227, 235, 238, 253, 259, 
260, 262, 275, 588; speech on, 278- 

279 

Keynes, Lord John Maynard, 567 
Kimmel, Admiral Husband E., 391 
King, Admiral Ernest J., 396, 399, 
416, 425, 438, 506, 507, 5H-5I2, 
. 513, 514, 515, 550 
King, Mackenzie, 358 
Kirk, Admiral Alan G., 506 
Kirk, General Norman T., 454 
Klots, Allen T., 192, 195, 249 
Knox, Frank, 388, 389, 396, 416, 482, 
563 ; and appointment of Stimson as 
Secretary of War, 323, 324, 332, 
333 ; Army-Navy relations, 506, 
507, 509, 5H ? 512, 517, 519; and 
battle of Atlantic, 66, 367, 368, 
371, 386; and mobilization, 354, 

355, 356 
Knudsen, William S., 354, 355, 380, 

492 

Korea, Japanese conquest of, 261 
Krueger, General Walter, 659 



Krug, Julius, 494 
Kyle, Colonel, 668 

Labor, before Pearl Harbor, 381 : and 

war, 488-491 
Lamarr, Hedy, 412 
Lamb, Charles, 573 
Land, Emery S., Admiral, 340 
Landis, Kenesaw Mountain, 9 
Latin America, 157; in 1931, 174- 

187; peace of Tipitapa, 110116; 

mission to Nicaragua, 110-116; 

relations with, as Secretary of 

State, 174-187 
Lausanne agreement, 211-214, 215- 

216 
Laval, Pierre, 207, 211, 212, 273- 

274, 275, 542 

Law, profession of, attitude toward, 
xxi-xxii; practice of, 1918-1927, 
107-116 

League of Nations, 159, 264, 276, 
568, 599, 604; fight for, 101-107; 
Germany joins, 270; invasion of 
Ethiopia, 310; and Manchurian 
crisis, 227, 228, 229-236, 239, 244, 
246, 248, 249, 259, 260-261, 263; 
belief in success of, 306; U. S. as- 
surance to, 310 

Leahy, Admiral William D., 438, 

542, 575 

Lee, John C. H., 41 
Lend-Lease Act, 360-363 
Lend-Lease supplies, 367-376 
Lewis, John L., 109, 381, 489 
Lincoln, Abraham, 437, 477 
Lindbergh, Charles A., u6 
Lindsay, Sir Ronald, 293 
Littlefield, Congressman, 15 
Lloyd, D. Frank, 7 
Loomis, Alfred, 468 
Locarno Pact, 270, 277 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 20, 104, 159 
London Economic Conference, 298 
London Naval Conference, 162-174, 

187, 192, 210, 224, 266-267 



INDEX 



691 



London Naval Treaty. See London 

Naval Conference 
Longworth, Nicholas, 20 
Longworth, Mrs., 160 
Lovett, Robert A., 343, 344, 396, 

468, 510, 660, 662 
Low, Seth, 66 
Lowell, A. Lawrence, 246 
Ludlow Resolution, 313 
Lytton Commission, 23 i f 236, 259, 

260-261 

MacArthur, General Douglas, 388, 
407-408, 507, 517, 539, 659; 
Roosevelt's message to, 400-401, 
404-405 ,* and question of Philippine 
withdrawal from war, 397-404 

McCloy, John J., 342-343, 344, 396, 
406, 451-452, 455, 468, 543, 550, 
553, 555, 557-559, 560, 563, 568, 
569, 577, 578, 582, 585, 587, 620, 
641, 660, 66 1 

McCormack, Alfred, 455 

McCormack, John W., 614 

McCoy, General Frank R., 40, 115, 
149, 261, 350-351, 500, 530, 556 

MacDonald, Ramsay, 205, 206, 209, 
211-212, 257, 265, 448, 525; and 
London Naval Treaty, 165-166, 
167, 170, 171; visits Washington,' 
1 66 

Macfarlane, Wallace, 15 

Machado, President, 183 

McKinley, xviii, 118, 127, 375, 522 

MacLeish, Archibald, 497 

McNair, General Leslie, 444 

McNarney, General Joseph T., 466 

McNutt, Paul, 481, 486 

Mahan, Alfred T., 506 

Manchuria, dispute between China 
and Russia in, 188-189; Japanese 
invasion of, 220-263 

Marshall, General George C., and 
Anglo-American strategy, 1941- 
1944, 413-420, 423-425, 428, 431, 
433, 435,' an( l antisubmarine war, 



510-516 passim; army of, com- 
pared to Grant's army, 456; on 
army reorganization, 449; on 
ASTP, 460; and atomic bomb, 612, 
613, 614, 617; aware of Russian 
strength, 605; and battle of At- 
lantic, 366, 367, 386; and contro- 
versy over General Gullion, 553; 
co-operation with British, 455 ; and 
defense of Philippines, 388, 396, 
398, 399, 404, 405 ; and De Gaulle, 
550; establishment of unified Allied 
high command, 413-414; establishes 
unity of command in Army outposts, 
407 ; explains Draft Extension Act, 
377; grants naval request, 509; 
helpful influence on War Depart- 
ment, 409, 410, 656; and Lend- 
lease, 356, 359; and military dis- 
cipline, 454; on military govern- 
ment, 553 ; and military govern- 
ment in North Africa, 555, 558; 
and officer training program, 348- 
349, 35, 35 1 '; an d Pearl Harbor 
probe, 391 ; and problem of size of 
Army, 476; and public relations, 
498 ; and question of change in title 
of the Chief of Staff, 450; and ques- 
tion of supreme commander for in- 
vasion of France, 437-443 ; and 
reorganization of War Depart- 
ment, 453; and scientists, 469; and 
Selective Service Act, 346; "steals" 
services of General Henry, 467; 
and Stilwell, 528-541 passim; Stim- 
son bids farewell to, 668, 669 ; Stim- 
son's estimate of, 330-331, 662-664; 
suggests Navy share Pentagon 
Building, 506; and use of radar, 
510; on use of scientific help, 465; 
on young men as soldiers, 474. See 

also AVALANCHE, BOLERO 

Martin, Joseph, 614 

Martyn, John W., 410-411, 660 

Marx, Karl, 655 

Matsudaira, Tsuneo, 257 



692 



INDEX 



Maynard, Isaac, xix 

Meade, General George, 478 

Mellon, Andrew W., 204 

Merck, George, 468 

Merrill's Marauders, 537 

Mexico, 178, 179, 181, 183, 186-187 

Meyer, George von L., 49 

Midway, battle of, 407 

Milburn, John G., 15 

Military government, 553-561 

Military training. See Universal 
military training 

Mills, Ogden, 200, 204, 205, 211, 
290 

Minseito Cabinet, 169, 231 

Mobilization, industrial, 351-355 >" 
military, see Selective Service Sys- 
tem, U. S. Army 

Moley, Raymond, 293, 298 

Moncada, General, 114 

Monroe Doctrine, 175, 184, 185 

Montana, exploring in, xvi 

Moody, W. H., 3, 18 

Moratorium, on intergovernmental 
debts, 202-219 

Morgan, General Frederick Edg- 
worth, 430, 431-432 

Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 332, 354, 
356, 359, 36o, 495J and Morgen- 
thau plan, 568-570, 573-574, 576- 

577, 580-581, 582,583 
Morgenthau plan, 570, 574, 576, 577, 

584; estimate of, 566-568, 571-573, 

578, 580-582; See also Roosevelt, 
F. D. 

Morrow, Dwight, 167, 178, 181, 183 
Morse, Charles W., 10, 56 
Moses, General, 466 
Mountbatten, Admiral Lord Louis, 

423, 424, 533 

Murphy, Charles Francis, 68 
Murphy, Frank, 150 
Murphy, Robert, 555 
Mussolini, Benito, 172; visit to, 268- 

270 



Nagasaki, 625 

National Service Act, 473 J efforts in 

behalf of, 480-491 
Naval Treaty. See London Naval 

Treaty 
Nazis, estimate of threat of, 1933- 

1940, 305, 306, 307, 314. See also 

War criminals 
Neary, Elizabeth, 411, 675 
Negro, and the Army, 461-464; Navy 

prejudice against, 507 
Nelson, Donald M., 380, 492, 494 
Neutrality acts, attack on, I935-*94O, 

309-320 
New Deal, attitude toward, 297, 302- 

303 

New Haven, speech at, 1940, 318-320, 
324, 326-327, 328, 329 

New York Bar Association, elected 
president of, 297 

New York City, boyhood in, xii-xiii 

New York Constitutional Conven- 
tion (1915), 65-81 

Newfoundland, visit of inspection to, 
411-412 

Nicaragua, 183, 185, 186; efforts to 
remove marines from, 183-184; re- 
fuses to use American forces in, 
181-182; special emissary to, iu~ 
116 

Nichols, J. Osgood, 7 

Nicoll, Delancey, 15, 67, 70 

Nine-Power Treaty, 226, 227, 237, 
238, 239, 244, 247, 248, 249, 255, 
257; letter to Borah on, 249-255 

Nonrecognition, doctrine of, 257-258; 
and Manchurian crisis, 226-239, 
243, 244 

North Africa, invasion of, decision on 
arrived at, 425-426; Franklin 
Delano Roosevelt on, 419; Stimson 
on, 422-423, 426; success of, 427- 
428 

North Africa, military government of, 

554-559 
Nuremburg trial, 583-590 



INDEX 



692 



O'Brian, John Lord, 65, 66, 71, 304, 

355 

O'Brien, Morgan J., 67 
Officer Candidate Schools, 349-350 
Okinawa, 620 
Osborn, Frederick, 379 
Osmefia, Sergio, 124, 125, 127, 129, 

131, 134, 135, 136, 138-139, 144, 

149, I5i 
OVERLORD (invasion of France), 429- 

448, 524, 567 

Pacific bases, attitude on, 599-605 

'Tact of Paris," speech on, 259-260 

Page, Arthur W., 676 

Palmer, Arthur E., 341 

Palmer, George M., xv 

Panama, 178 

Panama Canal, defense of, 406-407 

Papen, Franz von, 212, 270, 279 

Paraguay, 185 

Parker, Judge, 15 

Parkman, Henry, Jr., 337-339 

Parr, Richard, 11-12 

Parsons, Herbert, 65, 66, 71, 96, 99, 
105, 106 

Parsons, John E., 15 

Patch, General Alexander M., 659 

Patterson, Dr. Frederick, 464 

Patterson, Robert P., 323, 324, 337, 
338, 339, 341-342, 343, 344, 35*, 
354, 362, 451-452, 492, 493, 660 

Patton, General George S., 41, 96, 
351, 427, 468, 499, 659-660 

Payne-Aldrich tariff, 19, 20 

Peace, Stimson's principles for main- 
tenance, of, 566-568 

Pearl Harbor, attack on, 382, 389; 
effect on national morale, 393-394," 
responsibility for, 391-393,' Stimson 
learns of, 39<>39i 

Pearson, Drew, 496, 499, 504, 580 

Pepper, George W., 20 

Pershing, General John J., 37, 97, 
99, 524, 556 



Peru, 174, 178, 185 

Petain, Marshal, 542 

Philippines, 157, 158; efforts to de- 
fend before Pearl Harbor, 388-389; 
efforts at independence, 148-152; 
inadequate defenses of, 600-601 ; 
Japanese conquest of, 395-405; 
Roosevelt's attitude toward, 298," 
Stimson as Governor General of, 
117-148; Stimson's differences with 
Navy over defense of, 395-397; 
tariff agitation in, 146-150; visit to, 

IIO-III 

Phillips Academy, Stimson at, xiii-xiv 
Pinchot, Gifford, 19-21, 28, 29, 30, 

31, 42, 43 

Pitkin, Walcott H., Jr., 7 

Platt, Tom, 4 

Poincare, Raymond, 272 

Poland, and Yalta agreement, 609 

Portal, Air Chief Marshal Sir 
Charles, 417 

Potsdam, Stimson at, 656 

Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley, 417 

Pratt, Admiral William V., 168 

Press, relations with, 210-211, 496- 
5O2 

Proctor, Robert, 354 

Production, effect of national indeci- 
sion on, 380-381 

Progressive movement, speech on,. 
58-62 

Prohibition, 286-287 

Public relations, 210-211, 496-502 

Pulitzer, Joseph, 14 

Putnam, Mr., xviii 

Quebec, decisions at, 439, 440 
Quezon, Manuel, 124-125, 127, 129,. 

134, 137-138, 14!) 143, 144, 147, 
148, 149, 150, 151; Roosevelt's 
message to, 401-403; and Philip- 
pine withdrawal from war, 397-405 

Railroads, prosecution of, 8-10 
Rayburn, Sam, 614 



694 



INDEX 



Reconstruction, planning for, 591- 

595. See also Europe 
Reed, David, 166-167, 168, 169, 172 
Reed, Walter, 557 
Regnier, Captain Eugene, 193 
Renwick, Sir Robert, 467 
Reparations, problem of, 202-219 
Roberts, George, 155, 156, 161, 195, 

323 

Robinson, Joseph T., 166, 167, 172 
Rogers, James Grafton, 192-193, 249, 

291, 295 

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 279, 338, 
352, 406, 453, 465, 648, 668; ad- 
ministrative technique, 494-496 ; 
and advisers, 333-334, 620; after- 
math election 1932, 288-296; and 
Anglo-American strategy, 413-418, 
419, 423-427, 435, 437-439, 441, 
443, 444, 447-448; and antisub- 
marine war, 509, 512, 5 1 5-516; and 
Army-Navy game, 504-505, 518; 
and Army-Navy relations, 522- 
523 ; as Commander in Chief, 524- 
525, 565-566, 664-667; and Atlan- 
tic Charter, 565 ; and atomic bomb, 
611-612; Cabinet meetings of, 561- 
564; and crime of aggressive war, 
586-587; and Darlan affair, 542- 
544; and dealings with Russia, 297, 
608-609, 637, 649; death, 656 ; and 
De Gaulle, 545-552, 560; and de- 
stroyer deal, 355-360; election of 
1932, 282-288; fears revolution in 
France, 575-576 ; first meeting with 
Stimson, 292-293; foreign and do- 
mestic policy 1934, 301-302, 310; 
guided by Marshall's views, 662 ; 
and Haiti, 184 ; handling of visitors, 
411 ; hears in 1902 tale of Japanese 
ambition, 301-302; and Italy, 310- 
311; and Lend-Lease, 360-363, 592- 
593 ; and London Economic Con- 
ference; 298; and London Naval 
Treaty, 173; and military govern- 
ment, 553-561 ; and Morgenthau 



plan, 567, 573, 574, 576-578, 580- 
582; and National Defense Advis- 
ory Commission, 354-355 ; and 
Negroes, 463 ; and New Deal, 302- 
304; offers Stimson position of Sec- 
retary of War, 323-324; arid Pearl 
Harbor, 382-393; and Philippine 
withdrawal from war, 397-405; 
physical condition, 575, 605; and 
postwar Allies, 592-593; prepares 
U. S. for war, 364-381; "quaran- 
tine speech," 312; and Selective 
Service, 345-348 ; and Stilwell, 530, 
535-536, 537, 538-539, 540; Stim- 
son's conferences with, 335; and 
Stimson's views on Philippines, 298, 
395-396; and Supreme Court, 80, 
303-304; and total mobilization, 
470-502 passim ; and Trade Agree- 
ments Act, 300, 301 ; understands 
Nazism, 524-525 ; and U. S. in 
Pacific, 601, 602; and use of radar, 
509; and war debts, 217-218 

Roosevelt, Mrs. Franklin I)., letter 
to, 667 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 6, 61, 78, 107, 
170, 195, 245, 312, 331, 332, 374, 
453, 522, 555, 560; appoints Stim- 
son U. S. Attorney, 3-4; attitude 
toward Woodrow Wilson, 9 1 ; and 
customs reforms, 12, 18; and cus- 
toms service reforms, 14; death of, 
91 ; and election of 1916, 88; final 
break with William Howard Taft, 
48-55 ; generation of, 82-83 ; and 
Latin American policy, 184; and 
Orient, 244; and Panama Canal, 
176; Herbert Parsons a political 
adviser of, 66; and party split, 62; 
plans to raise division, 92, 93 ; 
praises Stimson's speech, 62; rela- 
tions with William Howard Taft, 
18-55 passim; requests Stimson to 
make speech, 58 ; Stimson meets, xx ; 
Stimson's campaign for governor of 
New York, 21-28; Stimson's recon- 



INDEX 



695 



ciliation with, 91; use of open let- 
ter, 249 ; Wickersham's mistrust of, 
65; and World War I, 91, 92, 93 

Root, Elihu, 3-4, 41, 172, 180, 450, 
506, 507, 522, 556, 660 ; Ainsworth 
dismissal, 35, 36; on class reunions, 
198; and election of 1916, 88; and 
fight against rebates, 9; and fight 
for League of Nations, 102-106; 
Latin American policy, 177; and 
New York Constitutional Conven- 
tion of 1915, 63, 65, 66, 68, 71, 
75; and Panama Canal tolls, 41; 
and Philippines, 118, 127; on Platt 
Amendment, 183; on problem of 
disarmament, 276-277; and Roose- 
velt-Taft split, 20, 49-5, 52, 53 ; 
as Secretary of War creates general 
staff, 32-33, 39; and Sherman Act, 
45-46; Stimson assistant to in law 
cases of, xxi ; Stimson enters law 
firm of, xviii ; and Stimson's ap- 
pointment as Secretary of War, 29, 
30; and Stimson's campaign for 
Governor, 24, 25; as U. S. Attor- 
ney? 5 > n use of government troops 
to protect private interests, 181 

Rosenman, Judge Samuel, 586, 587 

ROUNDHAMMER. See OVERLORD 

Roxas, Manuel, 125, 129, 131, 134, 
144 

Royce, Josiah, xv, 198-199 

Russia, 226; alliance with, 525, 526- 
527; and Anglo-American strategy 
in 1942, 416, 418, 419, 420, 421, 
422, 423, 426, 427; and atomic 
bomb, 642-647, 65 1 ; attack on Fin- 
land, 317; dispute with China, 188- 
189; German attack on, 371, 383; 
Japan makes peace proposals to, 
617-618; and Manchuria, 222, 
233; nonrecognition of, 159; pact 
with Germany, 1939, 3*6; and 
problem of disarmament, 266, 268 ; 
relations with, 568, 583, 605-611, 
637-642, 648-651; Stmison's con- 



tact with, 525, 526-527; as threat 
to Japan, 624; and trusteeship 
problem, 604; Russo-Japanese war, 
224 

Sacasa, 112 

Salisbury, Lord, 250 

Sandino, General, 114-115, 181 

Santo Domingo, 185, 186 

Sayre, Joel, 398, 399 

Scotland, visit to, 297 

Scott, General Hugh L., 93-94 

Secretary of War, effect of state of 
war on functions of, 408-409 

Seiyukai Cabinet, 231 

Selective Service System, battle over 
extension of, 377-379; efforts to 
broaden, 473-480; efforts to re- 
duce draft age, 473-476; introduc- 
tion of, 345-348 

Senate, confirms Stimson as Secretary 
of War, 325-331 

Shaler, Professor, 198-199 

Shanghai incident, 239-242, 243, 246, 

253 

Sherman Act, attitude toward, 44-48 

Sherman, John, 417 

Sherman, James S., 23 

Sherman, General William T., 451, 
468 

Shidehara, Baron, 223, 225, 226, 
227, 228, 230, 231, 252 

Shiozawa, Admiral Koichi, 239, 240 

Shiratori (Jap spokesman), 229 

Short, General Walter C., 391 

Sicily, invasion of, 428, 429 

Simon, Sir John, 237, 242, 247-248, 
257, 263 

Simpson, General William H., 659 

Sims, Admiral, 524 

SLEDGEHAMMER ("beachhead" inva- 
sion of France), 418, 426 

Slessor, Air Marshal, 513, 514 

Smith, Alfred E., 67-68, 78, 107 

Smuts, General Jan, 434 

Socialists, 107-108 



INDEX 



Somervell, General Brehon, 354, 

440, 451, 452, 453, 492, 536, 660 
'Soong, T. V., 530 
'Spain, war in, 307, 313-314 
Spanish-American war, xx-xxi 
Spooner, Senator, 15 
Stalin, Joseph, 439-440, 607, 608, 

637, 638, 640, 646, 647 
Stark, Admiral Harold R., 357, 366, 

386, 399 

Stassen, Harold, 325 
State Department, 154-296 passim; 

reorganization of, 1931, 191-195 
Stephenson, Robert P., 7 
Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 548, 563, 

568, 603, 607 
Stilwell, Joseph W., and China, 528- 

541, 659 

Stimson, Henry L., ancestry, xii ; edu- 
cation, xii-xvi; love of outdoor life, 
xvi ; joins law firm, xviii; marriage, 
xviii ; early work as Republican, 
xix-xx ; enlists Spanish-American 
war, xx ; appointed U. S. Attorney 
for N. Y. Southern District 
(1906), 4; runs for Governor of 
N. Y., 21-28; appointed Secretary 
of War (1911), 29-31; officer in 
World War I, 91-100; private law 
practice (1918-1927), 107-109; 
special emissary to Nicaragua, m- 
Il6; appointed Governor General 
of Philippines, 116-117; appointed 
Secretary of State (1929), 143, 
156; return to private life (1933), 
297 ; appointed Secretary of War 
1940), 323-331; working routine 
World War II, 411; resigns as 
Secretary of War (1945), 656-657 

Stimson, Mrs. Henry L., xviii, xxii, 
14, 16, 30-31, 95-96, 98, Ul, 113, 
117, 128, 138-139, 155, 199, 268, 
296, 297, 323, 344, 411, 668, 669, 
677 

Stimson, Lewis (father), 30, 83, 95, 
455-456; career of, xvii-xviii 



Straight, Willard, 96 
Stresemann, Gustav, 212, 265 
Submarine warfare, 84-86, 89, 508- 



Sumner, "Billy," xiv 

Supply, Priorities, and Allocations 

Board, 380 

Supreme Court, 80, 303-304 
Surles, General Alexander, 500-501 
Suzuki, 625 

Tacna-Arica affair, no, 157, 185, 

' 187 

Taft, Robert A., 327, 328-330 

Taft, William Howard, 283, 329, 
495, 522; executive budget, 72; 
final break with Theodore Roose- 
velt, 48-55; and Philippines, 118, 
119, 127, 129, 138; relations with 
Theodore Roosevelt, 18-55 passim; 
Stimson as Secretary of War 
under, 28-55; an d Stimson's cam- 
paign for governor of New York, 
21-28; swears Stimson in as Sec- 
retary of State, 157-158 

Tanaka, Baron, 224 

Tanner, Frederick, C., 66 

Tardieu, Andre 257, 272 

Teheran, conference at, 439-440, 441, 

443 

Thatcher, Thomas D., 7 

Thomas, Elmer D., 614 

Timberlake Resolution, 145, 146, 148 

Tipitapa, Peace of, 110-116 

TORCH (invasion of North Africa), 
419, 422, 423, 424, 425-428 

Toynbee, Arnold, 190, 191, 238 

Trade Agreements Act, 591 ; speech 
in behalf of, 209-301 ; support of, 
298-301 

Trieste, question of, 609-610 

Truman, Harry S., 44, 107, 519, 523, 
583, 592, 609, 610, 617, 656, 657, 
663, 668; and atomic bomb, 619- 
624, 625, 626, 629, 634-636, 637, 
638-640, 642-646; and surrender 
of Japan, 627 



INDEX 



697 



TVA, attitude toward, 43-44, 303 
Tweed Ring, 58-59 
Tydings-McDuffie Act, 149-150, 151 

United Nations, 515, 584, 597, 600, 
648 ; and question of Pacific bases 
for U. S., 599-605; and Russo- 
American relations, 610, 611 

U. S., as world power, 308, 310, 629, 
652-655 

U. S. Air Forces, 661-662 

U. S. Army, controversy over size of, 
475-480; and controversy over uni- 
fication of armed forces, 518-523; 
defends west coast, 405 ; and the 
Grand Alliance, 524-564; mobi- 
lizes, 345-351; morale of, 1941, 
379-380; and the Negro, 461-464; 
and war production, 491-496; pro- 
viding supplies for, 350-355; reor- 
ganization of, 31-41; Stimson as 
officer in, 91-100; Stimson's judg- 
ment on, 657-662; Stimson's work 
for preparedness, World War I, 
86-91; wartime organization of, 
449-469 

U. S. Army-Navy relationships, 503- 

523 

U. S. Navy, and controversy over 
unification of the armed forces, 
518-523; difference of opinion on 
movement of U. S. Fleet before 
Pearl Harbor, 386-387; differences 
with Stimson over defense of 
Philippines, 395-397; effect of 
Pearl Harbor attack on morale of, 
396; and London Naval Treaty, 
162-174; and Negroes, 463, 507; 
opinion of, 506; voluntary enlist- 
ments suspended, 475 

Universal military training, 318-320, 
596-600 

Vandenberg, Arthur H., 327, 328, 

604 
Versailles treaty, 264, 265, 271, 272, 

273-274, 275, 277, 567 



Villabos, Ruy Lopez de, 118 
Visitors, method of handling, 411 
Vitetti (translator), 268 
Voroshilov, General, 440 

Wadsworth, James, 27, 471, 482 

Wagner Act, 303, 304 

Wagner, Robert, 67, 304 

Wainwright, General Jonathan M. s 
405 

Walcott, Frederick W., 89 

Walker, Frank, 554 

Wallace, Henry A., 487, 612, Stim- 
son impressed by book of, 299 

Walsh, David L, 337-339 

Walton, Daniel D., 7 

War criminals, 584-590 

War debts, problem of, 202-219 

War Department, effect of state of 
war on functions of, 408-409; or- 
ganization of, 331, 340-344; pro- 
tects West Coast and Panama, 405- 
408; reorganization of, 449-453; 
staff of, 409-412 

War production, and the Army, 491- 
496 

War Production Board, 492-494 

Warren, Senator, 35-36, 37-38 

Washington, D. C., climate of, 411 

Washington, George, xii 

Water power, federal regulation of, 
41-44 

Watson, Edwin M. ("Pa"), 334 

Wedemeyer, General Albert C., 539 

Welles, Sumner, 356, 399 

Wheeler, Burton K., 378 . 

White, Charles A., xviii 

White, Francis, 177, 193 

White, Harry, 569 

White, Miss Mabel Wellington. See 
Stimson, Mrs. Henry L. 

White, Wallace H., Jr., 614 

White, William Allen, 184, 327, 357 

Wickersham, George W., 18, 45, 65- 
66, 71 

Willkie, Wendell, 140, 329, 357, 
543, 544 



6 9 8 



INDEX 



Wilson, Charles E., 494 

Wilson, Hugh, 229 

Wilson, Woodrow, 41, 61, 62, 71, 
78, 80, 159, 247, 283, 353, 375, 
437, 603 ; and Clayton Act, 48 ; 
declares war on Germany, 88-89 ; 
and fight for League of Nations, 
101-107; on neutrality, 90; notes 
to Germany, 1915, 84-85; Latin 



33-39; death of, 127; and election 
of 1920, 104-105 ; as Governor 
General of Philippines, 122-126, 
133, 134, 135, 136; and reorgani- 
zation in Army, 33-41 ; Stimson 
visits Philippines with, no-iii; 
and work for preparedness, World 
War I, 86-87 
Woodley, purchase of, 160161 



American policy, 177-178, 1 79; Woodring, Harry H., 12^ = 
and League of Nations, 264; and Wood Clifton A cnfi 
Philippines, 120-121; Theodore 
Roosevelt's hatred of, 91 ; Stimson 
opposes la'ck of preparedness, 86-88 
Wingate, General Orde C., 533, 537 



World Court, 276, 278 
World Disarmament Conference, 
265-268, 279 



Winnacker, Dr. Rudolph A., 675-676 World War T > 82 ' lm; Stimson as 
Winthrop, Bronson, xviii, 30, 324 officer m ' 9I " 1O 

Wise, Henry A., 7 

Wood, General Leonard, 452, 522, Yale, Stimson at, xiv-xv 

556; and battle for General Staff, Young, Owen I)., 202, 205